Weekend
by SaraER
Summary: The complete story of their weekend together.
1. Part I

Author's Note: Inspired by the story "Peacetime," my motivation for this story was to fill in the missing pieces of Carrie and Brody's titular weekend together. Some conversations will be familiar, others completely new. In this story I wanted to dissect and examine their volatile time together. We know what they said, but what were they thinking? What were they feeling? I hope you enjoy it.

* * *

It was completely quiet. That was the first thing she noticed, the complete noiselessness that enveloped her, enveloped them. It was awkward. She felt that he was maybe giving her the silent treatment, which was odd, because he had of course invited _her_ into _his_ car. It was also eerie—a sense of foreboding that seemed to follow her around when she was near him, either physically or mentally, which was, well, always.

She was always thinking of him. She thought of him when she woke in the morning, when she took her pills after she showered, as she picked out her clothes, as she got in her car, as she passed through the security gates at Langley, as she locked her car door, as she came home in the evening, as she lay in bed trying to sleep. She could not remember the last time she wasn't thinking about him, in some sense. And in that way she felt so strongly that she intimately knew him. Even before last night. Watching him for four weeks had fostered this incredible closeness. Like she was in forced solitary confinement with him, which, when she thought about it, wasn't that far from the truth. She wondered who would have been the person in the straight jacket, who would have been the person pounding off the walls.

They had been driving for ten minutes—although it seemed more like ten hours to Carrie—before she mustered up the courage to say something.

"So why am I here?" she started. Immediately she regretted saying it. It came out all wrong. It sounded very abstract, existential almost, like she was dancing around the real thing. And it sounded mean. She felt bad, but turned to him, wary.

"I don't know, you just got in my car," he responded drily. He said it like a goofball frat boy, all standoffish but playful, like he was playing hard to get.

Carrie narrowed her eyes. "Well I couldn't have gotten in if you didn't stop for me," she shot back. She smiled, trying to lighten the mood, be less accusatory.

"True." She was going to have to work harder to fill these silences, these long pauses.

Brody adjusted his seatbelt and took a turn. "So did I pass?"

The polygraph. "The polygraph_?" Yes, fucker, you passed, you know that you passed, and I know you were lying. How the fuck did you do that?_ "Yeah. Flying colors." She said it in an off-hand way. She inserted a "pfft" there despite her best efforts.

It was a tricky balance. She needed to maintain the cool, CIA agent exterior. But she needed to get closer to him. She needed to know him better, more thoroughly. But keep her eyes secret. Never give away her eyes.

"So you won't be hauling me in again next week?" he said, smiling in that impish way that kind of annoyed her. She grinned back.

"Not that I know of." There it was again, a silence. She widened her eyes and nodded slightly, as if to acknowledge her acute discomfort right here, sitting next to him in this car. It seemed very much like a first date to her. _What do I say now? Did I say something to upset him? _

"I'm taking some time. From home." He was veering off in an entirely different direction. He exhaled. "From Jess." It was like he had to psych himself up to say it. But then he wasn't entirely sure why he _was_ saying it. Was he justifying what he thought might happen next? Maybe it would seem less… dirty if he felt himself that he wasn't actually doing anything wrong. But he had fucked her last night in the backseat of her car and she didn't seem entirely opposed to the idea. She had egged him on as much as he had her, placing her hand on his arm at the bar as they ordered round after round of drinks. She had done it five times. He had counted, remembered, each one filled with a kind of electricity that made him flinch.

He couldn't get a proper gauge on her. She was an experienced CIA officer, a spy, he thought, she wouldn't let down her guard so easily. Or would she?

"Is that right?" she said.

"She was fucking someone," he said. And he said it venomously, with complete conviction. Maybe that was his justification. Tit for tat. An eye for an eye. He thought of Carrie's eyes and turned to look at her but she was staring straight ahead.

"I'm sorry." She wasn't really sorry but what the fuck was she supposed to say? She ran her fingers through her hair. She did this often when she was feeling uncomfortable or stressed.

"So what exactly are we doing?" she asked him a moment later, her voice high and upbeat, curious. She realized right then he could have completely misinterpreted the question. It was a loaded question after all.

"Well I'd like a drink. Or three." She laughed, relieved he hadn't misconstrued what she said.

"Alright, swanky or hole-in-the-wall?"

"I don't like the word 'hole' anymore," he said quickly.

"Right," she nodded. Sometimes she forgot that, as strongly as she believed he was a turned POW, he was still, after all, a POW, a prisoner of war. Before he was turned, he was a prisoner, as lonely and tortured and beaten as a man can get before breaking, before buckling. She knew he was paranoid; she had made notes of it during the weeks she had spent watching him. Every time he flinched in the mirror or curled up in the corner she was reminded that this man was living two realities.

"But I do like a good dive." He looked over at her and they exchanged glances. That impish smile again. She raised her eyebrows knowingly as she turned toward the window again. A good dive. Yes, they were heading straight into something, and neither knew just how far they'd go before coming up for air.

"Well, there's a place a few miles ahead that serves good drinks. They have some pool tables and the crowd is always good."

"Yeah?"

"I'm sure we'll find an interesting mix on a Friday afternoon, too," she said.

"Do you go there often?"

"Not really. I've been a few times with colleagues, that's all."

"So you prefer the swanky places then?" he asked, smiling.

"Jazz bars mostly. Do you listen to jazz?"

"Not really. I don't know much about it." She nodded as another long silence ensued. This would all become easier once they both had a few drinks in them.


	2. Part II

A few minutes later they arrived at the bar. He held the door open for her as they walked in. He removed his jacket and placed it on an empty barstool, prepared to offer to take hers, before realizing she had left it in the car.

"I'll get drinks. Do you want to go get a pool table and some cues?"

"Sure." He liked her taking charge. There was something relieving about being told what to do instead of actually having to think about it first.

Carrie ordered their first round—tequila for her, bourbon for him—and walked over to the table.

"Alright, I have to say, I'm not that great at pool," she said sheepishly.

"Well, we can be bad together. I'm much more of a darts guy myself." She handed him his drink and they clinked glasses. Neither of them knew what to toast to. Instead, they exchanged looks and took sips. It was strangely fitting now, these silences. For Carrie, at least, it allowed her time to think of what to say next. Because while being with Brody was exhausting, planning her every word and move, careful not to reveal too much of anything, it was also strangely relaxing. The sense of dread she'd had in the car before was now almost gone, replaced instead with the veneer of courage that the tequila gave her.

As they started to play, it did get easier, thankfully. Carrie told him about college. Going to Princeton and studying foreign affairs and Arabic. He listened intently, asking questions, like he was genuinely curious_. Maybe he is_, she thought. The conversation turned to him eventually, and she felt bad when he said he had gone to state school. Now all her stories about college seemed boastful in retrospect. But he was prideful about it all, and he talked with pride, too, about reenlisting in the Marines after September 11.

They shared that, she thought, a feeling of debt after 9/11. That they owed something to this country, albeit for entirely different reasons. Perhaps they had more in common than she thought originally.

Halfway through their first game she went back to get a second round, and in her general state of delirium completely forgot to ask the bartender to make her drink only a single.

By the end of their first game, Carrie's lie to Brody was exposed. She prepared to sink the winning eight ball. "The more I drink the worse I play. That's not happening to you."

"I know, pissed off all my college boyfriends, too," she said playfully.

"All of 'em?" he asked, trying to conceal his surprise. She didn't seem like the type to have many boyfriends. But not because she was prudish (he knew she wasn't) or unattractive (he certainly knew she wasn't). She struck him as someone who was too focused on her studies to take up with a series of men. There was a thoughtfulness to her, and he could tell from her general uneasiness around him that she wasn't used to this kind of thing. But that only made him want her more.

She was very intense. And immensely focused, her attention sharp like a razor. And there was something _off_. He could tell from their conversation outside the church that night, in the rain. Something had shifted in her in the Middle East. They shared that. He knew then that he had to know her.

"Both of them," she admitted weakly. She sunk the final ball, easily, square in the center, took down her target.

"Fuck me!" He looked over at her, she was grinning, glowing in the wake of this defeat. She wasn't ashamed or embarrassed that she had just kicked his ass, and Brody loved that. "Two out of three?"

"Buy me another, you're on."

"Cuervo?"

"Tequila Revolucion. Silver. No lime."

"Oh, you like your clear liquors," he said, smiling. She was fun to drink with.

He walked over to the bar and ordered the third round. Straight bourbon for him, tequila for her. He felt bad that he had made her drink all that bourbon last night when she clearly hated it. The truth was he would have switched to tequila if she had asked. It all tasted the same to him. A moment later the bartender handed him the drinks. Brody passed over a ten-dollar bill to him. He glanced over at Carrie, who was talking to a red-haired guy in baggy pants and a polo shirt.

"Hey, aren't you Nick Brody?" the bartender asked. "You're that returning Marine. It's an honor to meet you," he said. He was a bearded man and he looked a bit hardened. He offered his hand to shake. "This round's on us," the man said.

Brody paused and looked over to Carrie again. "…people fucking with me," he heard the man next to her say. He walked over tentatively.

"Well who does? Who does like people fucking with them?" Carrie sneered. She narrowed her eyes at the man. What had he walked into?

"Hey is there a problem?" Brody asked.

"Yeah, the problem is this mouthy bitch," the guy said, glaring at Carrie.

Brody swallowed and reminded himself to stay calm. "Hey, look. Are we okay here?" A pause, as he looked knowingly at the man, a de facto threat. Brody was much bigger than him. "Huh?"

"So is there like a supremacist fist bump?" Carrie said, gesturing with her hands. She hadn't gotten the stay calm memo. "What are you, a fucking moron?" she said, shaking her head.

"Bitch!" the man said, raising a hand to hit her. All at once Carrie ducked and Brody grabbed his arm, kicking him in the shin and striking him square in the chest. He doubled over immediately. Brody felt embarrassed, starting a bar fight like a fucking teenager.

"Ah, get those fuckers!" the man said, straining to be heard.

"Oh, shit!" Carrie exclaimed as Brody grabbed her arm and led her the fuck out of there. So maybe Carrie was the one who had started the bar fight, but she felt much less ashamed.

They darted out of there, Brody grabbing his jacket off the bar stool on his way out. "Lunatic!" he shouted, although he wasn't entirely sure who he was shouting it at. He hoped she didn't think it was at her.

Clumsily he fished for his keys in his pocket, quickly unlocking his door.

"Fucking! Open the—" Carrie shouted, banging on the window. She got it open and swung in just as a group of men exited the bar. "Fuck you bitch!" the man shouted.

"Go!" she shouted at Brody, almost too forcefully, she thought, before she realized that her sense of urgency was probably a good thing in this situation.

Brody sped off, zero to sixty in five seconds. She turned back as the men grew smaller and smaller behind them. Finally she couldn't help herself and she busted out laughing, almost maniacally.

"You are a dangerous fucking drunk!" Brody said to her.

"Thanks," she replied, throwing her hands up in the air. This entire dynamic was dangerous, volatile, like playing with fire. But that fire—that heat—was thrilling. It was exhilarating.

"It's not a compliment!" he shot back, in exasperation. He was only a little upset. "My hand!" he said, shaking out his right fist, its knuckles already a cruel purplish color.

She was still laughing, riding this thirty-second high for all it was worth. She hadn't done something truly that reckless since… well, last night in the backseat of her car, but this was entirely different, she assured herself. She looked over at him, beaming. He was smiling, too, in spite of himself, and that was how she knew he was having a good time also.

"Okay, okay, where now?" he asked. He was desperate for her direction. She was going to steer him straight, he knew it, and in more ways than one. She would be his guidepost.

Before she could catch herself she said it: "Well I have a cabin. Or my family does. I've been meaning to get there." She looked over at him, resting her head on the back of the seat. She smiled at him, raised her eyebrows. It was all very suggestive. Again she felt like she was dancing around the real thing, and if she hadn't already had a few shots of tequila the two and a half seconds that passed after she said this would have filled her with the dread of rejection.

"Sounds like the stars have aligned!" he offered instead.

"I-95! Hit it!" she said. Brody watched as she whipped her head playfully back toward him, her hair swooping across her face. She had the most beautiful blonde hair, he thought.

"Alright, how 'bout some tunes for the road then? I don't know about jazz, but maybe we can find something on the radio…" he said, fiddling with the dial.

He turned to a country station. "No!" Carrie exclaimed emphatically.

"Alright, moving on."

"Up next, the last of our trio of Duran Duran songs. Here's 'Hungry Like the Wolf!'" the radio DJ said on the next station Brody found.

"I'm gonna guess this is also a no," Brody said.

"You'd be right." Carrie said. "Here, let me find something." She fingered the dial, spinning it three rotations clockwise, completely abandoning Brody's methodical approach. Eventually she landed on a Motown station. "Verdict?" she said.

"I approve!" he replied, smiling back at her. She returned his smile, her eyes glowing back at him. They remained as secretive as ever.


	3. Part III

After a half hour on the road, fueled by the two drinks in her stomach, the Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross on the radio, and—did she take her pills this morning?—an overwhelming sense of restlessness, Carrie proposed that they stop at a liquor store to buy a fifth of vodka. He agreed, almost too eagerly. It was like he could feel his buzz wearing off—they both could—and like addicts they would do anything for another fix.

Brody got off the highway at the next exit and they meandered a little on an unknown stretch of road until finding a liquor store.

"Don't act too crazy in there," Brody said as he unfastened his seat belt, looking over at Carrie.

"I'm fine," Carrie said, trying to hide her annoyance. She hated that he thought she was crazy. She hated, too, that he seemed more sober than she felt. But she felt a fuzziness in her mind, and her heart felt a little like it might explode out of her chest. She felt like she was walking on air as she climbed out of the car and meandered into the liquor store.

Brody followed her in and led her over to the vodka selection, his hand resting gently on the small of her back. She couldn't tell whether he was guiding her in an attempt to control her or whether he was just looking for an excuse to touch her. (The truth: both.)

He found a rather cheap brand and bought two, for good measure. Then they walked over to the cashier, who eyed them disapprovingly. Could cashiers refuse to sell to you if you seemed visibly drunk? Brody wasn't sure, so he carefully measured his words, concentrating hard on walking assuredly and not looking the man directly in the eyes. Carrie kept silent.

"Thank you, sir," Brody said as the man handed him two paper bags, one for each bottle. And they walked out silently, emotionless, like they had just pulled off a bank heist.

When they got in the car, it was as if a fog lifted. Brody immediately doubled over in laughter. He was in a fit. Carrie looked at him curiously. This was bizarre. Who the fuck was he calling crazy? But he kept laughing. Soon, the absurdity of the situation took hold of her, like a virus, like mania itself, and she too burst into laughter.

Brody got back on the road, this time smiling ear to ear, and uncapped the bottle of vodka. They took turns passing it back and forth, one sip for him and one for her. It struck Brody that this exchange was practically akin to kissing and for the rest of the ride he couldn't help but wish that her lips were against his. The thought consumed him.


	4. Part IV

They arrived at the cabin just as the sun was setting. There was a faint greyness to the air, the sun mostly gone and the breeze from the water wicking up against their skin. Brody pulled up outside of the cabin, the car jolting to a stop.

Carrie was the first to get out. Brody followed, holding the fifth in his hand. He surveyed the cabin. It looked old and worn, but homey, comfortable.

"Wow, I like it," he said, simply but honestly.

"Yeah, it's old school," Carrie said, walking around the car to meet him. "No AC, build your own fire. Like that." It was a humble place, sure, but it held a lot of memories for Carrie, some bad, most of them good. She had spent her summers as a child here, with her parents and Maggie and the family dog, Huron.

She turned to look at Brody, smiling mischievously. She bent over, uncovering a rock. What was she looking for? He uncapped the vodka again to take a swig and nearly stumbled as he walked down the uneven slope to the water.

"Yeah, it's perfect!" he replied. For what, he wasn't sure. It was an escape, that much was true. He made no mistake.

"Where is the fucking key?" Carrie said, thinking out loud to herself. If she weren't so drunk she would have been entirely more frustrated. Meanwhile Brody stared up at the tall, slim trees around him. He loved the outdoors, loved the forest, loved the water.

Eventually Brody turned back to her. He was also too drunk to be frustrated.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"I can't find the key," she said.

"Are we gonna have to sleep in my car?" he said. "Maybe we could break in." He only suggested this half-seriously but was a little taken aback when Carrie shrugged in half-acceptance.

She put her hands on her hips, thinking. "Maybe you could call your sister?" he suggested.

"Yes!" She dug her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed her sister's number. It rang two times before she picked up.

"Hello?" Maggie answered curtly.

"Maggie! It's me!" Carrie replied excitedly. She was out of breath, from what she wasn't entirely sure.

"Hi" was the dry response on the other end.

Carrie suddenly felt nervous. She could feel the disapproval in her sister's voice seeping through the phone. Even a hundred miles away she could feel it. "Um, hey, just curious," she stammered. "Um, which rock do we keep the cabin key under?"

Behind her, Brody was fumbling through a pile of rocks himself. It was a rather pathetic scene.

"You're at the cabin?" Maggie said. She could not have sounded more sober.

"Uh, no I'm home, just, uh… wondering." Carrie said, pacing up and down the path. Why couldn't her sister just tell her where the fucking key was? "…About, uh… the key."

"Carrie, what's goin' on?" Maggie persisted.

Carrie paused. "Uh… nothing. Nothing at all." She walked back over to Brody who was looking at her expectantly.

"You were supposed to come over tonight and get your meds." _Fuck_, she thought. She looked over at Brody, convinced he had heard Maggie on the other line. How close was he standing to her? Could he have heard? She walked a few paces away, like a teenager straining to get out of earshot of her parents.

"Uh, I'm gonna do that Monday," Carrie said, running her fingers through her hair.

"You don't have a pill for tomorrow or Sunday." In that moment Carrie thought Maggie sounded exactly like her mother, scolding her father for always refusing to take his pills, letting them languish in the medicine cabinet like they were poison.

"No, I have enough, I'm fine," she countered. She looked back at Brody who was about to take another sip. She begged him to unconsciously. She couldn't help but think she must have sounded like a helpless child to him, arguing with her sister over God knows what.

"Well you sound drunk," Maggie said, sighing. Carrie looked over at Brody and snorted. She was on the cusp of a hysterical fit of laughter like they'd had in the car earlier.

"Drunk?!" Carrie said, raising her eyebrows and doubling over in amusement. Was it that obvious?

"Shh," Brody whispered. Who did they have to be quiet for?

"I am actually at the cabin."

"With who?" Maggie said. She wouldn't quit.

"Uh… no one," Carrie started, looking at Brody. "I'm all alone. I'm… meditating," Carrie said, which didn't seem like a complete lie. Carrie looked at Brody knowingly, like she was actually fooling her sister. He laughed at the charade and stumbled back down the path toward the dock.

"Okay. Look, take your pill tomorrow and then come over Sunday night, no skipping. Oka—?"

"Okaaaay. Promise." Carrie said obediently.

"Okay."

"Uh, so the key?" Carrie asked, circling back.

"It's in the old stove," Maggie said.

Right! Yes! "Oh! Right, stupid, alright I remember, okay," Carrie said, bringing her hand to her forehead in mock stupidity. "Um, thanks."

"Hey look, I'm at the open house at the girls' school, but—"

"Oh, great!" Carrie said. She really just wanted to hang up now. "Have fun!" She tried not to sound too patronizing in her tone but she couldn't help but feel some glee that her sister was languishing at some kind of PTA meeting while she was up here with Brody.

"I'll drop everything and leave if you're in trouble."

"Uh, okay, I'll see you Sunday." She slyly averted any of that.

"Okay," Maggie whispered. Then the line went dead.

"Everything okay?" Brody asked, taking another sip from the bottle. It was nearly empty now.

"Yeah, wait here!" Carrie said. She ran around the front of the house, to the side door where the old gas stove lay abandoned. Grabbing the key from the inside, she let herself in, looking over her shoulder to make sure he hadn't followed her.

Outside, Brody meandered again down the path to the water, letting the breeze wash over his face, the smell of the trees envelop him. He found a star, small and faint, up in the sky. He felt very alone there with her, like they might have been the only people around for miles. It made him feel closer to her. He wondered what she was doing inside. Maybe checking to make sure the water wasn't rusty or the place smelled all right or that it hadn't been taken over by a pack of wild bears. He smiled to himself and looked at the bottle of vodka in his hands. He realized he had drunk most of it and felt a little guilty. But she had been a bit drunker than he so maybe now they were even.

A moment later he heard a stirring in the leaves behind him.

"Whatcha lookin' at?" she said. He wanted to ask her what she'd been doing inside but answered instead.

"A star," he said, pointing up to the sky.

"Wait an hour, you'll see thousands," she said smiling, walking out in front of him.

"You know, I just need one," he said. She turned and smiled at him.

"I'd ask you what you were wishing for, _but_…" The word hung there, mocking him. Mocking both of them, really.

"What?" he said, stringing her along.

"How would I know if you were telling the truth?" she said, placing her hands on her hip in mock exasperation. She was being playful, and he couldn't figure out why.

Then it hit him. "Oh, the polygraph," he said, fingering the bottle of vodka. Carrie approached him, hands in her pockets.

"Have you been faithful to your wife, Sergeant Brody?" she said, imitating that geeky guy who had administered the polygraph—had it only been this morning? God, it seemed like a lifetime ago. In fact this entire adventure had seemed to take up a whole lot longer than just a few hours. The time seemed to stretch out.

"Yes, I have," she said huskily, lowering her voice and frowning. It was a poor imitation of Brody, but she got her point across. They both busted out in laughter a second later.

"And hours before I was climbin' all over you," he said as she walked closer to him. Their faces were mere inches apart. She craned her neck to look at him.

"Did you learn that over there?" Carrie said. She had shifted into flirting mode now, trying to remain playful, but there was an accusatory undertone in her voice.

"The climbin'?" Brody said. It was like they were both playing dumb.

"_No_…" She let her head hang to the side and looked straight at him. Any pretense disappeared. "How to beat the box."

"Well, I had to lie sometimes to save my life. Believe I became quite an expert." It was the truth. Lies and truth had seemed to morph into one over there, or else not exist at all. When everything he thought he knew turned out to be false, it was hard to believe in anything any more. So he lived without them, without those definitions. It was surprisingly easy.

But here she was. She was like a kernel of truth at the center of him. She was true. She was here, right in front of him, her eyes a little glazed over, but still secretive as ever. But she was here. He could feel her heat in front of him, could taste her scent on the rim of the bottle after she took a sip. He wanted to reach out and touch her.

"How'd you resist cooperating? I mean, you're in a hole, they're beating you," is what she said instead. And it brought it all back.

"Carrie, I don't want to talk about it." It was the first boundary either of them had put up. A line he didn't want to cross. Not yet. He walked a few paces up, back toward the cabin. He was frustrated. Maybe the pretense hadn't disappeared after all.

Immediately she regretted saying it. She didn't want to anger him. "Sorry," she said sheepishly, turning back to look at him like a naughty child. She hung her head. She really was sorry. She had pushed the wrong button.

Surprisingly, she heard him walk back toward her. Apparently the mood hadn't been entirely ruined. He handed her the bottle of vodka, now nearly empty save for a few sips. She took a drink. This was the mask they'd made themselves wear, of alcohol and drunkenness.

"You're a pretty good drinking buddy," he said, and that pretty much summed it up. It wasn't the first time she'd heard that. She smiled to herself.

"I got a little carried away with the Nazis," she laughed, truly embarrassed. He bellowed.

"Well, I figure we're safe here." Back to this: witty banter, a strange back-and-forth, perverse really.

"Yeah, unless my sister sends in the dogs!" She was still a bit annoyed Brody had heard snippets of their conversation earlier. She smiled in spite of herself.

Brody stepped toward her. "I've been thinkin' about you," he said. His eyes sparkled, reflecting the glint of the water.

"Yeah?" Carrie said. She raised her eyebrows and returned that same beaming look. This was flattering in exactly all the wrong ways, but she couldn't help it. What he didn't know was that she had been thinking about him, still was, at all times.

"And… last night," he said.

Carrie sighed. "Mmm. Parking lot sex: classy."

With that, Brody secured the cap back on the vodka bottle and stepped in closer, so close their hips touched. "Can we graduate to cabin sex?" he muttered.

_What a line_, she thought. He was clearly pretty rusty. But she couldn't help herself. She fixed her face, wiped the goofy smile off it. He kissed her, lowering his head slightly. She couldn't help but laugh. Maybe it was the drunkenness, maybe that horrible line. She wrapped her arms around his neck. He was much taller than she was and he was a sturdy support.

They didn't need to communicate after that. At once they both turned around, toward the cabin. Carrie led him in through the front porch, clumsily opening the door and slamming it shut behind them. She led them through the kitchen, into the living room, right in front of the fireplace. They were like a couple of wayward baby deer, unable to walk all of a sudden. She turned around and met him; he was much closer than she expected, the bottle still in his hand.

She leaned in to kiss him and he wrapped his arms around her. She tried to undo the button on his pants and failed. He let out a whimper. She laughed in her failure and instead took off her shoes. He followed suit, kicking his off, too. She looked up at him and he grabbed her around the waist, pulled her into him and kissed her deeply. For a couple of drunks they were all of a sudden surprisingly coordinated and composed in all this, save for the occasional slip in balance. He began to fiddle with the buttons on her shirt and she helped him, undoing the remaining ones at the bottom. He pulled off his shirt and watched her as she backed away from him, throwing her shirt down. She was standing there now in a black lacy bra and he nearly lunged at her.

He grabbed her around the waist again and guided them both to the couch where he gently lowered her down. He began to kiss her neck and she let out a weak groan, as much as she tried not to. She countered and took back control, rolling on top of him as his arm slid down her back. She braced herself, held out both her arms as he unhooked her bra.

She snaked her hands under his shirt and eased it up over his head, tossing it lazily behind her. Again she attempted to unbutton his jeans as he kissed her again, raking his fingers through her limp blond hair, pulling back at her neck a little.

Their breathing quickened. Carrie could feel a bead of sweat at the back of Brody's neck, which was strange because she herself had goose bumps up and down her arms.


	5. Part V

Two minutes later, when they had finished, Carrie first and Brody a few seconds later, they sat there quietly, letting their breathing return to normal, inhaling carefully, exhaling with relief. It was over fast, just like the night before. Brody was sitting upright, his back straight as a board, and Carrie was in his lap, looking over his shoulder, one hand hooked around his neck, which was no longer wet from perspiration. His head was buried in the crook of her chest and his breath was hot against her. She reached back and found the bottle of vodka on the coffee table and took the remaining sip from it. Then she kissed him again.

"Are you okay?" she said. He hadn't spoken.

"Should I go get the other fifth in the car?" he asked, rather blankly. She wasn't going to protest. She was plenty drunk but that had never stopped her before. She nodded and smiled. She lifted her leg from on top of him so that he could get up. He pulled his boxers on and left her sitting on the couch, holding the empty fifth in her hands.

He walked outside in a state of delirium. He felt high. His mind was buzzing from residual pleasure, residual drunkenness. He wanted to keep feeling this way. What was it about her? Even just being around her, he felt different. Like he wasn't the POW who'd spent eight years tortured and beaten. Or worse. It all melted away.

A few minutes later he wandered back into the cabin, fifth in hand. He entered the living room but Carrie wasn't there. He looked around just to make sure he hadn't completely missed her.

"Carrie?" he called out. No answer. He unscrewed the cap on the bottle and took a large sip. "Carrie?"

Then he heard it: the sound of water running. He turned around in the kitchen to see if the tap was on. It wasn't. He followed the sound into the bedroom. A lamp was on in there. He walked into the bathroom. The shower was on. Carrie was in the shower.

He wasn't sure what to do. Instinctively he removed his boxers. He slid the curtain open and stepped in silently. She was facing away from him, letting the water run over her face, running her fingers through her soaking hair. He stepped behind her and kissed her neck, running a hand over her bare stomach.

She jumped out, scared, frightened. She nearly slipped turning around to meet him. She let out a cry of relief when she saw his face. "God, you scared me," she said. He laughed.

"I'm sorry," he said with a sheepish grin. The kind that annoyed her. She rubbed her eye.

"You didn't have to come in here," she said.

"I want to," he answered. He kissed her again and she clutched his back, letting the water fall over them. It was hot and felt sweet over her cold body. Soon the steam grew thicker, like a fog separating them. She thought her skin might be turning red from the heat.

Brody began to run soap over her legs, up her thigh, around her hips. He kneeled down in front of her, the water dripping from his face and clouding his vision. She held onto him, holding the back of his head as he rested his cheek against her torso. They were completely quiet like that for minutes.

Then he rose up to meet her, kissing her stomach, her chest, her neck, still in a fog. They both were. She realized that her lips were numb and her head still felt fuzzy. Soon she couldn't even feel the water cascading over her back. She looked up at him and pressed her fingers into his chest, ran them over his clavicle. She studied the marks she left as they faded right before her eyes.

He kissed her again, cupping her face in his rough, calloused hands.

They fucked again, quicker than before on the couch. Carrie looked up at him as she came down, cold again from the pleasure. She let out a faint moan. She was shivering now. He turned the water off behind her and grabbed a towel from a hook on the door, wrapping her in it, running his hands up and down her sides to warm her up. He could see how cold she was. He could almost feel it.

She stepped out of the shower, rather disoriented. The cabin was now filled with darkness, save for the lamp she'd turned on in the bedroom. It was the last thing she remembered.


	6. Part VI

Carrie woke the next morning in the most acute pain she could remember. Her head was throbbing. It hurt so bad she could cry. The white morning light was streaming in through the windows and hit her right on the face. She opened her eyes and immediately regretted it. The throbbing only intensified. She rubbed her forehead and looked around her. She was lying on the couch; it had been pulled out into a bed. She was wearing only a bra and panties. She was very confused. She looked over and saw Brody lying there next to her, still sleeping. There was a blanket thrown across his body haphazardly.

She stood up quietly, carefully, because the floors creaked. She tiptoed into the bedroom and opened up one of the dressers. She wondered what kind of clothes she'd find in there. It'd been a long time since she'd come up here. To her surprise she found a respectable-looking pair of jeans and a grey shirt, neither of which she remembered purchasing, but it wasn't half bad under the circumstances. The jeans were a little too big, but they'd do. She threw on a pair of sandals and walked out onto the porch. She looked down at her watch. It was nearly eleven o'clock. She wondered when Brody would wake up.

She walked carefully down to the dock, watching her steps to make sure she didn't fall. She wasn't sure if she was feeling drunk still or just tired. There was still a haziness, but being outside, in the sunlight, next to the water, seemed to chip away at it.

Carefully she tried to piece together the events of the previous evening. The last thing she remembered was the water rushing over her face and Brody next to her. He had come in, startled her, snuck up behind her as she was showering.

But what else? She guessed that Brody had made up the bed because she certainly didn't remember doing that herself. Had they finished the second fifth of vodka? Judging by her feelings of nausea she thought that maybe they had.

In flashes some parts came back to her as she strained to remember.

_Wrapped in a blanket, lying on her side, her hair still wet, looking at Brody, into his blue-green eyes. He smiled. _

_He offered her the fifth of vodka. "I'm done," he said. "Me, too," she replied. "After this, I mean," she laughed. She handed it back to him and he took another sip. _

How many times had they had sex? Two? Three? She couldn't remember but the detail nevertheless seemed unimportant. She supposed that after one it ceased to matter.

She sat out there and looked at the water. The temperature was comfortable and her eyes felt heavy. She could hear the birds chirping in the trees overhead. Were it not for her raging headache and acute sense of nausea, she might have felt completely relaxed.

A moment later she heard a rustling in the leaves behind her. Brody. Walking down the path in bare feet, wearing his clothes from the previous day. He looked as rough as she felt.

"Morning," he groaned, squinting in the sunlight.

She sighed. "Morning." She smiled, trying to shrug off the headache.

"God, it's so nice down here," he said, leaning against the post on the dock. She beamed up at him.

"Yeah."

He sighed loudly and she looked up at him expectantly. "I overdid it last night," he said, walking over to sit beside her.

"Me too," she said. That much was obvious.

"No more booze today."

"Yeah."

He seemed to wince as he sat down beside her. He groaned again. She turned to look at him again and their eyes met, but only briefly. It was back to long pauses. She turned away quickly, smiling slightly.

"Look—" he began.

"No, I know, this was… crazy." There was that word again. She hated using it but it was true. This entire adventure, all of it, was manic and crazed. She didn't want to look at him. She felt ashamed somehow.

"I should call home," he said. She turned to look at him and nodded. She agreed… right?

"Yeah," she said. So she did.

"I should _go_ home actually," he corrected himself.

"Sure. Okay. We can head back," she said calmly. She was very calm. They both were, in complete opposition to everything they had been yesterday: abrupt, loud, wild.

She smiled at him to let him know it was all right to leave. He smiled back, too, meekly.

"I love the water," he said huskily.

"There's actually a really beautiful waterfall out there," she said, motioning across the lake. "My sister and I would hike to it everyday in the summer," she continued. "Take our compasses and notebooks, play Lewis and Clark." She laughed at the memory and he smiled back at her. He saw that thoughtfulness right then. He loved watching her as she laughed. There was something so intensely and purely jovial about it. It was so carefree, the most intense kind of laugh he'd ever seen. He looked at her as she stared out over the water.

She looked over at him and caught herself. It was a silly memory, she thought to herself. Kind of embarrassing if she really thought about it. She raised her eyebrows. _Well, that's me_, the gesture seemed to say. At that moment he leaned back, propped his elbows onto the table. She mirrored him, leaning back a little, arching her back away from him. She turned to look at him.

"Will you show it to me?" he asked her.

"Sure," she said. She smiled again, unable to contain it. She looked him up and down. He looked different today. Very normal, she thought. It still seemed surreal that he was sitting there next to her. That she had taken him here in the first place. "I think you'll need shoes first, though," she added, nodding at his bare feet.

"I couldn't find them," he said.

"Oh?"

"Must have flung them off in opposite directions." They laughed.


	7. Part VII

"I hope I can remember how to take you there," Carrie said, almost as a disclaimer. "I don't want us to get lost."

"We won't get lost," Brody said, rolling up the sleeves on his shirt. He placed his hands in his pockets, a modest gesture. "When was the last time you were here?"

"Oh, God. Uh… maybe four years ago? Fourth of July, I think."

"I guess your job doesn't allow you much vacation, huh?"

"Not much. I was just back from my first assignment in the Middle East then." She wasn't sure whether it was okay to bring up Iraq, or the war, around him. "But we'd come here every summer when I was a kid. My parents and my sister."

"Are you close to her? Your sister?" he asked.

"I guess. She's always sort of looked out for me. Even on these hikes, she'd always make sure I didn't run too far ahead or something." She laughed as she thought about it, the memory.

"So were you Lewis or Clark?" he asked.

"Oh, had to be Lewis," she answered immediately.

"Why?" he laughed. He didn't think she'd answer so emphatically.

"I like the name Meriwether," she smiled. He laughed with her.

"So you were an adventurer even as a kid?"

"Yeah, I never really fantasized about New York or corner office. It was always… Nepal. Uganda." He looked ahead at her and saw the way she was gesturing with her hands. She was so excited. It was that pure passion. He could feel it almost jumping out of her. She smiled to herself.

"How long were you in Baghdad?" he asked. She noticed the tone of his voice had shifted.

"Couple three-year stints," she answered meekly. He was taking the conversation here. She didn't want to stop him, maybe he'd let something slip that was useful. She thought of this in spite of herself. Or maybe because of herself, because that was who she was. It was the first time she'd thought about him that way all day.

But she still didn't like talking about Baghdad.

"What happened out there?" he pressed. She shook her head.

"What didn't happen?" she sighed. It was the truth. She had seen it all, nightmarish things, horrible things. Things that haunted her to this very day. She didn't talk about it to anybody, not even to Saul. She kept it in her, bottled, never to be opened, only to be looked at crudely. She rubbed her arm.

"What sent you to that support group?" he said, ducking beneath a few low-hanging branches.

She sighed. And then it just came out. "I lost someone." She said it matter-of-factly, dejected, pursing her lips in resignation. "My translator." The truth was that he was more than just her translator. They'd been sleeping together, too. But she had never spoken of that before, either, and she wasn't about to tell him.

"Were you with him?" he asked. He seemed genuinely interested. It struck her that he might not have anyone to talk to, not just about the war or Iraq… but about anything.

She squinted her eyes. "Uh, he was protecting me. Trying," she added. She still felt guilty that she had not let him protect her, that she had not been easier to protect. She didn't need that help, she had told herself. "But this mob just got crazy." It was weird hearing it spoken, hearing herself say these words. These heavy, gutting words. "And they hung him from a bridge." She left out that they had also burned him alive. Even this version of the story didn't seem real to her, didn't seem true.

"I was pinned down, I couldn't—" She felt the need to add that in there, she wasn't sure why. The guilt probably. It still ate away at her, revisited her when she least expected it. Like now.

Brody reached out to her, placed his hand on her back, offered her comfort. "Yeah." She nearly recoiled at his touch, not because it was unwelcome but because it felt so foreign. He had touched her before, but they had been drunk, in every sense of the word. It felt strange, now, to feel his hand against her back, to graze the fabric of her shirt, when she had just told him something she had never told anyone.

It was like he was confirming his presence, that he was here, was privy to this revelation. He was not offering comfort, but rather a confirmation. She had been there. It had happened. He had been there, too. It had happened to him also. They were here now, together.

He was not some hologram, a projection of her imagination or cruelest fantasies. Or maybe he was. That she was walking alongside him, taking him to this relic of her past, still seemed surreal to her. She wondered if he understood the weight of it all.

"It's hard to find people to talk to about it," he said, seeming to echo her thoughts at that moment. She understood this more than ever. It was that shift that occurred, and then nothing else was ever the same. All of a sudden the pieces didn't match up, in you or with anyone else, and forevermore there was a disconnect.

Carrie bit her lip, measured her words carefully. "How 'bout your wife?" she offered.

Brody shook his head, resigned. "It's like she doesn't know who I actually am now." He understood it, too. The disconnect. That tectonic shift. Nobody could see what they saw and return unscathed. And nobody could understand who hadn't seen it. They shared that.

"Maybe it just takes time?" she reasoned. She had nothing to back up this theory, but it seemed like something Saul might say, something wise and knowing. _Patience_, Saul was always telling her when she wanted to plow full steam ahead. Sometimes it did just take time.

"I, I can't be with her," he said. It was bewildering to him how easily his words were coming. He was letting down a wall around him, the wall he'd put up for so long it was as if he didn't know what lay behind it.

"No?" she said, keeping her eyes focused on him, not wavering an inch. He looked down at the path below him, but he could feel her gaze fixed squarely on him. He could feel its intensity. Those secretive eyes.

"No I just…" he cleared his throat. "I just can't." He sighed, contemplating his next words. "But I can with you."

He said it softly but completely, without reserve. It was bold. They both knew it. Carrie raised her eyebrows and glanced at him from the side.

"We were drinking heavily," she laughed. Maybe that's what he meant. She knew from the month-long surveillance that he wasn't having sex with his wife.

"No, but it's different with you," he continued. "I don't know, it's uh… I don't know, it's _free_."

"As in _I don't charge_?" she joked. She looked over at him, smiling fully. He laughed. She was trying to lighten things. She'd let a wall down before, telling him about Baghdad, and now he was letting one down, too.

What would happen when all the walls were down? How could they build something if all the walls disappeared? As they peeled away at each other, shedding these protective layers, they were finding something real, a kernel of truth at the center. But also something altogether more raw.

"As in, it's the first time since I've been back that… well, I've found some fucking peace."

She didn't know what to say. Before she could catch herself she said, "Yeah, me too, actually." She laughed to herself. He had said the thing she'd not been able to materialize herself.

There was a peace there, a calm. A calm even in all the craziness and disruption. Because it melted away. It was like the pieces that had shifted in them, the ones that had become scarred or chipped away or else not fully whole—she saw those in him. She saw them when he stirred awake in his sleep, when he remained terse and silent at the dinner table with his family, when he twitched at the word "hole." And he saw it, too, though it was less fully formed for her. He imagined the time back had softened some of the edges. But he saw it. The way she pursed her lips and smiled politely when he mentioned the war or Iraq. Her relentlessness… in everything. The way she laughed, with complete abandon, striking a pure and utter joy. She found joy in the most ridiculous things. It was sometimes all she had left.

"That's pretty rare for me," she added, looking up at him, her eyes wide and intense, knowing. Because she knew it was rare for him, too. But he didn't, wouldn't, couldn't know. He could not know how much.

She looked over at him again and suddenly he stopped. She realized they'd been walking for probably thirty minutes straight without stopping. He tilted his head to the side, his mouth forming the beginning of a smile. "So." And he stepped forward, toward her. She kept her hands in her pockets, not stirring an inch. She looked up at him, straight at him, face completely straight.

"Are we gonna try this sober?" he said. She licked her lips, an unconscious gesture. She arched her body backward, trying to create space between them but he seemed to lean into her again.

She pointed forward. "The waterfall's just up here," she said, stealing a smile, again in spite of herself. She forged ahead.

He stood there, still, and picked a leaf off a branch, fingering its smooth texture. He looked ahead at her, remembering her story of her sister, and quickened his pace to catch up.


	8. Part VIII

A moment later he caught up with her. She still had her hands in her pockets, her shoulders hunched over defensively. She was guarded.

"We're almost there," she told him, wanting to return to that easy rapport they'd just established but that he had threatened to destroy.

"Good," he said. It was all he said. They walked further, the leaves crunching beneath their feet, Brody ducking under the occasional branch. Carrie wiped the hair from her face. In the distance, she could hear the cascading water hitting the rocks.

"So… how has the rest of the homecoming been?" she asked. That silence had become too much to bear.

"As good as I could hope, I guess." He paused, waited a moment. "It's been rough. Sometimes. My daughter." He was not sure how to proceed. His thoughts came out like fragments, only pieces of the bigger thing, the whole that he could not articulate. "It's amazing how big she's gotten." His voice became lighter just at her mention. Another pause. "Sometimes I think she might the only one who can see me now, how I am. I'm not like some… ghost to her."

"Yeah?"

"With Chris, it's like I'm still a stranger. I think Dana can see me. She can see me." He kept saying it, as if repeating it would emphasize the importance. The sheer weight of being seen. Despite being a war hero, cast into the spotlight, he felt so profoundly invisible. Could no one see him? Carrie could, she could see all of him, into him. And Dana could, too.

Carrie remained silent.

"It's like I'm lost. I feel so lost sometimes…. Do you ever feel lost?"

She hesitated, surprised at how frank he was being. "Comes and goes. It gets better." She was lying.

"She is my anchor, though. It's like she's the only thing… tying me back to that life."

"How old is she?" Carrie asked. She already knew the answer.

"Sixteen." He laughed. "But she seems so much older. She's really very smart for a sixteen-year-old." He sighed. "But she can see me. I listen to her, because she understands it."

"So…"

"What?"

"You're not completely lost. You have her."

"Yes. I'm not completely lost. I _do_ have her." He stopped short. Carrie could tell he was holding back.

"But?" she prompted.

"But it's not the same. I mean… she's only sixteen. I want to protect her."

"From?"

"From me. From all of it..." Sometimes he thought the world might collapse around them, and he wouldn't be able to save her. "She's still this eight-year-old little girl in my eyes."

"Right," Carrie said. She knew the feeling, that fixation on being the savior. She knew it too well.

"She can see me, but I can see her, too. I think she's just as scared as I am. But she puts on a face. She takes it all in stride, I guess. She has been the bright spot in all of this. I think."

"Right," Carrie said again.

"Well, her and…" Carrie looked over at him, almost begging him not to say it. Because it would hang there, heavy in front of them, between them, and she wasn't ready for it. She pleaded with him not to say it.

What they didn't notice was that the din of the waterfall had all of a sudden become unbearably loud, too loud to ignore. They pulled up on the rocks that lay at its foundation.

"Here it is," Carrie said, smiling. It was beautiful, as gorgeous as she remembered it, but it had been so many years since she'd seen it. She was transported back to her childhood, those hot and sticky days by the water with Maggie.

"Wow," Brody said. He approached the water carefully, watching his feet so he wouldn't slip on the rocks. When he was close enough, he extended his hand to her. "Here," he said, nodding at Carrie. "Here," he repeated, this time louder, in case she couldn't hear him over the water.

She eyed the waterfall carefully, then him. She approached with trepidation, but she never took her eyes off him. She reached out for his hand and gripped it hard. "Just jump," he said. She had to hop from one rock to the next to get to him. "I won't let go, I promise."

She took a leap and he pulled her forward, into him, and he clutched her waist as she stood next to him. Their bodies were pressed together, beneath the waterfall. It was a precarious scene, really, the two of them situated on a single rock. Carrie wondered why she thought they would both be able to fit.

They could see the shower of water falling forcefully in front of them. Carrie reached her hand out to touch the water. First one finger. "It's cold!" she shouted. She stuck in her whole hand and water sprayed everywhere. They shouted as it shot in all directions. He held her close to him, one hand wrapped around her waist, the other wiping water from his eyes.


	9. Part IX

As they walked back to the cabin, they kept a comfortable distance. Carrie held her hands in her pockets the whole way. Brody took off his button-down as the temperature rose late into the afternoon.

The walk back was considerably less chatty. Something did hang in the air between them. There seemed to be an unspoken, mutual understanding between them. That Brody would stay that night. And Carrie would let him.

Brody thought that would make it easier, not to say anything. She couldn't hide her disappointment when he admitted he should go home before, by the water. It seemed to radiate from her. Or maybe that was his own projection.

Still, in some part of his mind it seemed as if he was always going to stay. He couldn't recall when he'd decided this. Perhaps as they aimlessly searched for his shoes earlier that morning. Or as he watched her look out onto the lake beneath the waterfall, her eyes darting from side to side, taking it all in, as if she'd never see it again. Maybe even last night, in the shower, as Carrie silently clutched his chest and the steam rose up around them.

Telling her before that he should go home was no different than telling her yesterday that Jess had been fucking someone. It was his own justification—to himself and to her. _I am a good man_. He wanted so desperately for her to see he was a good man.

But now, she seemed to have closed off, bound herself up.

"So…" he began. She looked up at him, the first time since she'd held his hand to reach him under the waterfall. "Is it…" he started. "We should stay tonight." She looked down and then up at him again and smiled.

"Okay."

"Okay." He smiled.

A minute later, as they retraced their steps back to the cabin, the sunlight growing dimmer, Carrie said, "We should run to the store to get something to make dinner. There's no food in the kitchen."

"Alright," he said, and they kept on walking. It occurred to Brody that maybe he actually had gone home.


	10. Part X

They arrived just as the market was about to close. It was a small place, servicing the entire lake community. The kind of place that stocked only one kind of everything. Brody grabbed a basket as they walked in.

"Okay. I have to say I'm not the best cook. So I'm counting on you to steer me straight," Carrie said, smiling.

"That's a lot of pressure," he said.

"I know there's not much here, but you think you could make something out of it?"

"We could, yes," he said. "I can't do it all myself."

"Give me an easy job, then."

"How about spaghetti?" Brody said, eyeing a box of pasta on a nearby shelf. "And tomato sauce?" He added a can of tomatoes to the basket, too.

"Oh, well, you can't have spaghetti without garlic bread. My dad taught me that."

"Okay… garlic bread. Well, you have to make your own."

"Whatever you say." They walked over to the produce stand. Brody grabbed a head of garlic while Carrie picked up a baguette.

"And a salad, too," he added. "I assume you live off of takeout and fast food. You need to eat some vegetables." She smiled.

Carrie watched as Brody studied a selection of tomatoes. He picked one up, smelled it, squeezed it gently. He did the same with the avocadoes. She narrowed her eyes.

It was like the first time she had ever really seen him. Seen him, Nick Brody. As a man, a real person. He wasn't a soldier, nor a returning war hero. Not a prisoner of war. Not a sleeper agent. And she wasn't the crazy woman who'd defied orders. Not the rogue intelligence officer. Not the interrogator. He didn't represent to her some object to be watched and caught. Not some retribution for past mistakes. Not a stranger to be fucked.

It was freeing, to see him like that, standing over the tomatoes and avocadoes. It also terrified her. She felt paralyzed then. Her breathing began to quicken. If she could really see him, could he see her? Could he see her, too?

"I think that's all," Brody said, placing a head of lettuce in the basket, too.

"Good." She gave him a tight smile. She began to walk over to the cashier, Brody following closely behind her.

Brody paid in cash and as they walked out, Brody carrying a single paper bag, it struck Carrie how weirdly domestic this all felt. Grocery shopping. To cook a real meal.

All of a sudden she felt overcome by the need for a good strong drink.


	11. Part XI

Brody picked up on Carrie's tension in the car on the way back to the cabin. He wasn't sure what to say. How easily things seemed to shift between them. What had he said or done?

"Is everything alright?" he asked her.

"Yeah. Fine."

He smiled at her, eager to ease this iciness that had resurfaced. That was it with her, a constant push-pull. Outside the support group, in the rain, when she had been so warm and friendly. She had walked away as it began to pour and as he stood there, legs spread sturdily below him, it was as if a switch flicked in his body, in his heart, in his very being. This woman… who was she?

Later, when they'd met at the safe house and it was if he'd dreamed the whole thing. All business. He felt distinctly that she had been glaring at him the whole time. Who was this woman? She said later she didn't see any reason to make it known, that they had met before.

"Who else had to know?" she had said to him, smiling slyly. It was then he realized the covertness of their relationship thrilled her. When he had taken the polygraph the next day at Langley and the man asked him if he'd ever been unfaithful to his wife, his heart jumped. She was goading him. Or was she? What was she playing at? He looked directly into the camera propped on the table and said coolly, "No." So he was goading her, too.

He remembered, too, how she had whispered, "Wanna know what it's all about, the polygraph?" Why was she telling him classified information? Had her judgment been so compromised by their half-dozen drinks?

"Hamid's dead," she had said matter-of-factly. But also… seductively? Was she seducing him with the revelation of a terrorist's suicide? Did she get off on that, too? _Slit his wrists_, she'd hissed, raising her eyebrows, and Brody then could see only her lips, the way her tongue slithered out of her mouth when she said this.

Maybe he got off on that, too. They had fucked right then, finished in thirty seconds, and when they'd climaxed at the same time, almost frozen in space, Carrie's hands pressed against the back of the door, her face mired in shadows, Brody hovered over her and she smiled.

Now, Carrie stared straight ahead, like a deer in the headlights.

Did she regret agreeing to stay? Did she regret all of this? She hadn't said _no_ once these past few days, but then he remembered the state she'd been in. That they'd both been in. "You are a dangerous fucking drunk!" he'd told her. Maybe that was it. The cloak of alcohol, clouding her judgment and weakening her inhibitions. Maybe now the sheen was wearing off. It pained him to think she might be regretting something, anything.

That would taint this, all of this. Because even though he was here with her, away from his wife and kids, it still felt right. It felt so right. Pure. He thought back to last night.

But he could only remember in patches, bits and pieces.

_He wrapped a towel around her. She was shivering, shivering uncontrollably. Her hair was soaking, dripping down onto her clavicle, drops of water spotting the towel. She looked up at him and walked out of the shower. He stood there for a while, one hand leaning on the wall, the other hanging limp below him. _

_He couldn't fight that knot in the pit of his stomach. It seemed to burrow deep inside him. Minutes later, as the residual steam had begun to fade, he stepped out, grabbing another towel and wrapping it around his waist. _

_When he walked out of the bathroom she was sitting on the couch silently. She had put on her bra and panties again. Her legs were curled up beside her. The fifth was cradled in her hand. It was completely dark. The only light came in through the windows, from the moonlight, which reflected bright enough off the water to cast a glow inside the cabin. There was no fire. _

_And so it was cold, too. Carrie still hadn't stopped shivering. "Here," he said, handing her a blanket. _


	12. Part XII

"Miles Davis," Carrie said, walking back into the kitchen. "Your jazz education starts now."

"Oh, I'm taking notes," he said. He had set up a little workstation for her on the opposite counter. There was a cutting board, a small paring knife (he noticed she had small hands), and the tomatoes, washed and dried.

"Is this for me?" she said, motioning to the tomatoes.

"Yes," he replied. "Just… cut and put them in a bowl."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

"I think I can do that."

"Okay." She began to cut the tomatoes, going slowly at first. She couldn't remember the last time she had cooked something. Did this even qualify as cooking, she thought to herself. She at least was contributing.

Outside she could hear the crickets, like a subtle background orchestra. They had left the door open to let in some of the cool air. The fire Brody had lit burned brightly in front of her, lighting up the whole cabin. She kept her head down, focusing on the motion of the knife, through the tomatoes, up and down, rotate, repeat. It was rhythmic and rather soothing.

Behind her she could hear Brody rustling through something. The garlic, she guessed. And she could feel his gaze on her, too. She shifted her weight and looked behind her, only to find his back.

Then, so as not to seem as if she was looking at him, crossed over and retrieved a bowl from the cabinet in front of them. She did this silently and all in one swift movement. Brody eyed her as she walked back over to the tomatoes.

She could feel him looking at her still. (Perhaps he didn't want her to mess up the vital task of tomato chopping.) She shook her head and laughed to herself, at this perverse game they were playing, like sixteen-year-olds stealing glances at each other from across the cafeteria, admitting to nothing.

He looked back at her again. She sighed, trying to calm herself and that swarm of butterflies that had formed in her stomach again, like they were back in his car. How far away that felt to her.

Brody broke up the garlic in his hand, smashing it to loosen the skins. He looked over at the stove and stirred the tomato sauce. He didn't want it to stick. He looked back at Carrie again, dutifully keeping to her tomatoes.

"Hungry?" he said.

"Thirsty."

"Me, too," he said with a slight laugh. He was glad he wasn't the only one thinking how nice a tumbler of scotch would be right now.

Carrie stuck her hand over an unopened bottle of wine in front of her, mocking them.

"We're not doing that." She said it with conviction, shaking her head. It was like a personal challenge, this act of self-control.

"No," he agreed. He'd had a lot of experience with self-discipline over the years. He knew it would be easier, that it would ease the tension, would bring relief to them. But they didn't need it. They both knew this. His words from before echoed in his head_: "Are we gonna try this sober?"_ She had walked away without answering but he had caught her smile.

Carrie cleared her throat and looked down. She realized she had cut all the tomatoes. She crossed over to retrieve an avocado from the bowl in front of Brody. He turned to her at that exact second, and their hips grazed.

"Sorry," she said instinctively, laughing nervously. She brought the avocado back to the cutting board and leaned against the counter.

Then she just said it. "Jesus, I feel like a terrified teenager."

Brody grabbed a box of pasta from beside her. "I know," he laughed. Carrie looked over at him. Had he only agreed to placate her? Was this only terrifying for her?

Brody struggled with the box of pasta, then dropped it in front of him. "Aw, shit. I'm just gonna… I'm just gonna ask." He wore that impish smile again and approached Carrie, hands back in her pockets.

She looked at him warily, nervous. It hung on the tip of her tongue: _Ask what?_

"Will you go to the prom with me?" he said goofily.

She laughed, such an easy laugh. That was not what she was expecting but then again she was expecting him to say anything else.

"Well, do I get a corsage?" she asked, raising her eyebrows playfully.

"Wrist or pin-on?" he asked. _This is so bizarre_, she thought to herself.

"Actually I'll take a nosegay," she replied with a mischievous nod. She craned her neck slightly to look at him.

"What? I don't even know what that is."

She smiled. "It's a… kind of bouquet," she began, gesturing with her hands. "…From medieval times."

"Is that right?" he said with a smile. She was a wealth of strange information, he thought. First the neo Nazis, then Lewis and Clark, now this. He couldn't help himself. Her curious glow seemed to reflect off him, too.

"Yeah. Pre-shower, pre-soap, they would carry them around to… mask the unpleasant smells of the time," she continued, adding in a little flair. (Where did that come from? It was a side of herself she didn't even know she had.) "To, to keep their _nose gay_." She wondered if she had explained it correctly. She looked up at him a bit embarrassed.

He nodded his head in understanding, narrowed his eyes.

"I know these things," she admitted sheepishly. He laughed and so did she. He turned his head to look at her, her head still down. She was looking at the tomatoes.

She turned her head up, looked into his eyes. It was then, right then, that very second, that he could see into hers, too. Before, they hung like ciphers, never revealing themselves to him. So secretive. They never gave themselves away. Until now.

They had a softness to them. Bright but soft. And there was a kindness there, too. Delicate.

She smiled. Maybe this wasn't so terrifying. But his unfixed gaze on her made her feel self-conscious. She looked down again, and then, as if by force, back up to meet him. Maybe this wasn't so terrifying. Maybe it didn't have to be.

He smiled. Those eyes.

"Are you still thirsty?" he asked, his voice husky.

"Not at all." She smiled, in spite of herself, and he didn't take his eyes off her.


	13. Part XIII

They ate soon after, sitting cross-legged on the bed. As Carrie held the bowl of spaghetti in her hands she realized it was the first thing she'd eaten all day. But she only took a few bites. She felt uneasy. Not uncomfortable, but anxious. Was it nerves? They seemed to be hanging on a great precipice; she could sense they were headed toward something. About to fall into something, or else out of it. She could sense this so strongly.

Brody had more than a few bites. He ate his entire portion and went back for seconds. He made sure to commend her excellent salad-making. Funnily enough, neither of them touched the garlic bread, which seemed somehow fitting.

Their conversation was random but lighthearted. They talked of many things. How Brody had learned to cook so well, how his mother had showed him. Carrie's travels abroad the summer after graduating from college. Sports, again. This time they lamented the ever-failing Nationals, although Carrie admitted baseball didn't interest her much.

They cleaned up together. Carrie washed, Brody dried.

"Should I get more wood for the fire?" Brody asked as he replaced the last plate in the cabinet over the sink.

"Sure," Carrie said. "There should be some just outside the porch."

"Okay. I'll be right back," he said. Carrie nodded at him and watched as he walked outside. She turned off the light in the kitchen and walked into the living room. She looked at the couch, pulled out into a bed and made up with a mixture of blankets and quilts, all Carrie could find. The fire crackled beside her. She could sense it, approaching like some great tidal wave. She sat down.

A moment later Brody walked in, cradling a pile of logs. He shut the door behind him and walked into the living room. Carrie was sitting there, looking up at him, her face lit by the soft glow of the fire. He smiled.

"It's getting cold out there," he said. She smiled back at him as he carefully placed the logs next to the fireplace. He added one to the fire and poked it a little. Sparks flew.

When he was finished he brushed off his hands on his jeans and turned around. Carrie was standing now, her back to the bed. He walked over to her slowly, until he was standing right in front of her. He smiled as she looked up at him.

He leaned in to kiss her. The cabin was now completely quiet, save for their breathing and the occasional crackle of the fire behind them. She pulled away, but never took her eyes off him.

She lowered her gaze to his waist and tugged at his shirt. She snaked her hands below it, grazing his stomach with the tips of her fingers. He lifted his arms over his shoulders as she pulled his shirt up and over him. She looked up at him, untangling the shirt from his arms, and dropped it mindlessly at their feet.

It was then, when she lowered her gaze to eye level, that she saw them. They screamed out at her, not faded in the least. Just below his left shoulder, colored yellow by the firelight. She could feel her breathing quicken, get heavier, as she saw it. She reached out, touched it gently with her fingertips. She had barely placed a finger on him when he sighed deeply. She looked up at him. For a moment she had forgotten that he was there, because these scars… why hadn't she seen them before?

Why hadn't she seen them? Yesterday, in the shower? Hadn't she looked right at them? Had the steam been so thick?

She looked up at him, into his eyes, his sad eyes. He looked ashamed, of these scars, these marks. She furrowed her brow. _It's okay_, she wanted to say. And, _I'm sorry. I'm so sorry._ But she couldn't take her eyes off these scars, rough-hewn and crude. The one below his shoulder was still slightly red. It hadn't even healed.

_When did they do this to you?_ she wanted to ask him. She placed her hand over it. To cover it up, to hide it? She didn't know why. They still seemed to scream out at her. She placed her other hand over it. She rested one hand on his chest, sliding her fingers down his body with the other. She traced these scars, one after the other, like constellations, down his chest, to his abs. They were everywhere.

Another one. Just on his right breast, red and patchy. _How did they do this to you?_ she wanted to say. She kissed it instead. Would this right his pain? _I'm so sorry_.

She kissed it again, and then kissed his abs. _I'm so sorry_. All of a sudden his body contracted. He shivered. She raised her eyes, stood up to meet him. _I'm sorry._

He took her head in his hands, resting his palms gently around her face, her soft blonde hair. He kissed her. And then, as if in a mirror, snaked his hands up her shirt and lifted it over her head, tossing it limply to the side.

He brushed the hair from her face, wrapping his hands around the back of her neck. He looked at her, into her soft eyes, those blue eyes. She began to smile but he did not. Those soft eyes. He could really see them now.

He looked down at her, at her bare stomach, up to her chest, that lacy black bra. She leaned in, to kiss him maybe, but he kept his head down. He moved his hands over her body. He wanted to know her entire body, to feel her soft skin. He worked his hands across her shoulders, just below her neck. He couldn't remember the last time he had touched a woman's body like this.

She didn't shiver at his touch. He had strong, sturdy hands. They might have been the only place on his body not marred by scars, but they were worn. A soldier's hands. She placed a hand on his chest again as he traced the contours of her arms and shoulders. She realized it had probably been a long time since he had touched a woman's body in this way.

Suddenly she was overcome. She smiled, ear to ear. He took her in his hands and kissed her deeply. She wrapped her arm around his neck as he bent over, kissing her cheek, then her neck, her back. He kissed her all over. She looked straight ahead as he wrapped his arms around her waist, held her so close to him.

She leaned into him, hugged him. She could still feel his lips against her skin. She clutched him. And she could sense it now. It was overwhelming. She was overwhelmed, overcome, by him. Was he really standing there, next to her? She could feel his auburn hair in her right hand and the roughness of more scars on his back in her left. She could see the freckles scattered over his back, like field poppies. She held him closer.

He kissed her. He wanted to kiss her so deeply he ached. He began to kiss her neck again and he heard her exhale deeply. She arched her body back and turned her head to meet him; he was standing straight again. He kissed her. She rose, wrapped both arms around his neck, as he held her at her waist.

Their breaths grew louder. The cabin remained quiet.

He eased her gently backward, down onto the bed. She lay there quietly. She closed her eyes for a second and brushed the hair off her face. He was standing there in front of her, tall and stoic. She sat up and eased to the end of the bed, where he was standing. She looked up at him again, eyes wide. She began to unbutton his pants. She took great care, studying the movements of her fingers as she unfastened the button and worked the zipper down. She tugged at his jeans until they were below his knees before he took them entirely off.

He knelt down. She was still sitting on the edge of the bed. Her hair had become a little tangled in the back from where she'd landed on it before. She sat there before him, sitting up straight, her chest rising and falling with each breath. He wrapped his arms around her waist and brought himself to her, kissed her stomach. She placed her hands on his shoulders, rubbed them up and down his bare arms.

He looked up at her again. She had closed her eyes. He lowered his gaze to her waist and began to unbutton her pants, too. She lowered herself now, so that her back was on the bed. When he had unzipped them she began to ease out of them, sliding back to the head of the bed. When they were off he slid her panties down, too.

She now lay on the bed, her knees bent slightly. He sat there next to her, one hand to the side. He began to guide the other across her body, up and down her bent leg, over her hip, past her belly button. She stirred as he slid his fingertips just below her breasts. He looked up at her and her gaze was fixed on him. She reached her arm out to him, raking her fingers through his hair, to the nape of his neck. She felt him slide her bra straps down around her shoulders. She slowly reached back and unhooked her bra. Painstakingly he removed one strap, then the other, and tossed it aside. He kissed her breast, one then the other.

She shivered again.


	14. Part XIV

It happened as if in slow motion, which made it all the sweeter. She strained to keep her eyes open, to quiet her breathing. She could see him, could feel his taut chest above her. She tried desperately to grab hold of him but grew weaker with each passing second. She did not think about much. Her presence then consisted solely of pleasure, his image the only thing she could see.

She heard him exhale deeply and reached out to him, wrapped her arm around his neck, fingered his hair and brought him closer to her. Again she tried to grab hold of him, to kiss him, but failed, seeming almost to break apart at the seams before him. He had complete control over her. Each moment he pushed her closer, closer to the edge, teasing her. She was unraveling, nearly there.

She arched her back as the pangs of pleasure intensified but just as quickly faded. She opened her eyes. She scanned his face frantically. She could see the vigor in his eyes drain out of him. He was practically still above her, panting. She hadn't realized she had brought him over, too.

He shifted his weight above her, snaked one arm underneath her back.

"Do you want to stop?" she asked him. Beneath him, her face was lit by the fire, smooth and defined, but soft in the glow. He felt the shivers of pleasure radiate through his body, to his stomach, the tips of his toes, down to his fingers resting delicately beneath her.

He struggled to speak, to steady his breaths. He was shaking.

"No, I just wanna live here. For a second."

So desperately did he want to halt time, to allow himself to memorize every detail of this very moment. The way her eyelashes fluttered as she blinked. The pattern of the blankets wrapped around them. Even the smell: of firewood, of her. The coldness of the air around them, the heat of their bodies touching. To extract every detail, every ounce of pleasure and symmetry and peace from within her and within himself. This wholeness.

She began to smile. Her lips curving upward, eyes staring up at him, too. He could still see them, bright and unmoving, reflecting his shaking body back at him. She was beautiful.

She reached a hand out to him, to his cheek. She grazed her fingertips softly against his temples, his ears, down to his neck. Slowly he began to steady himself, his breathing and his body. The shaking began to subside. Just her touch.

She fingered the ends of his hair. Suddenly it was silent. He had stopped shaking and his breathing was quiet and measured. He remained above her, like some fixed presence, prepared to take her over.

As he moved above her, the sensation of pleasure returned, an electric pulse extending outward from her hips. She began to smile, in spite of herself, but grew weak again. She looked up at him, her mouth slightly open, limp and hollow. He leaned down to kiss her and she stirred, twitched, trying in vain to touch his lips. She grazed them instead, kissed his cheek.

He irked her, more intensely now, and she straightened her back, the sensation crawling eagerly up her body. She clutched the bed with one hand, wrapping her fist around the sheets, and raked her fingers through his hair with the other, feeling his scalp.

She moaned, tilting her head backward, her entire body engulfed. She felt the pulse of him radiate through her: a powerful, heated high, so sweetly electric.

He brought her over finally as she cried out beneath him, her breath hot and quick. She moaned again. He watched as she closed her eyes softly, milking the feeling for as long as it would last, and exhaled. He could hear her breathing become more controlled.

When she opened her eyes, many moments later, she eased his head down to her, kissed him softly on his chin, then his cheek. Finally his lips. He brought himself onto his side and then lay quietly on his back.

She smiled at him, turning on her side, bringing the pillow closer to him. She rested her head on it, so close to him, their bodies just inches apart. She smiled again. He hooked his arm around her, pulling her closer to him, into him, as close as she could be. Soon her head sat delicately in the crook of his shoulder, her stomach pressed up against his side. He began to stroke her hair rhythmically.

"Brody," she whispered. He waited for her to say something else but she remained quiet. She reached a hand out to him and began to stroke his stomach, up and down, slower and slower. Eventually her hand rested easily on his abdomen.

They were still like that, the only movement coming from the gradual rise and fall of his chest and her hand on him.

She didn't let herself close her eyes. She wanted to stay awake, to keep being _here_, next to him, as long as she could. The fire still glowed beside them, although it was fading quickly. It seemed to echo the two of them, there together but for only so long. She wondered what would happen tomorrow, when the sun rose and the inevitability of their lives materialized again. For now, she felt exactly where she belonged, so close to him, their breathing now synchronized, as if they were a single being.

She turned her head to look at him. He was staring at the ceiling, as if in a trance, his hands still sweeping through her hair. She felt pulled to him, as if by some magnetic force, and kissed him, first tenderly on his chest. He looked down at her, twitched. She pulled herself up onto her side and kissed his shoulder, his hand. He turned toward her and touched his hand to her face, grazing her cheeks and smoothing her hair.

"The fire's about to die," she said softly. He wrapped a hand around her waist and steadied himself on top of her, taking her completely in his grasp. He kissed her again and, as she let out a quiet moan, felt her fingernails dig into his back.


	15. Part XV

The fire was dead beside them. Carrie had no idea what time it was. Midnight? Two in the morning? Was the sun about to come up? She didn't know. She lay on her side, hands propped neatly below her head, staring into his eyes. He faced her too, a mirror image, one hand above his head, restful.

They said nothing. Silence. Perhaps they were too tired, perhaps there was really nothing to say. Carrie did feel exhausted but she felt eerily calm, too. It had been many years since she had allowed her mind to drain so much, to slow itself, to slow herself down also. Brody was lit in curious stripes of darkness and moonlight. She watched as he steadily inhaled and exhaled, his face completely relaxed.

He reached out a hand to her and touched her cheek. He cupped it with his palm and she smiled. Even in the shadows he could see her eyes light up, a gentle sparkle. She closed her eyes and touched her hand to his, clutching it over her own face, feeling it there against her skin. She kissed his hand and looked over at him, his eyes still trained on hers. She laced her fingers through his and kissed his hand again.

And they laid like that, linked, for a while longer, rising into the light, falling back into the shadows, until she fell asleep, him following soon after.


	16. Part XVI

The irony of returning home for Brody, of exiting one prison, was that he was also entering another. In his dreams or, more aptly, his nightmares, he was trapped in another way. Everything that haunted him, that plagued the recesses of his mind, showed up there, in sleep.

In Iraq, he rarely ever had nightmares. That was hell enough and sleeping was his escape. But now, he was living not one reality, but two. The returning war hero—the former prisoner—and the man with a darkest secret. To compartmentalize them, casting them off to different parts of his conscience so that he would always put on the right hat, was tricky, but he had mastered the task many years ago, sitting alone in that hole, trapped and tortured, beaten and bleeding. To surrender would be to forfeit his past reality—the good soldier, the good man—and admit to his fate. As long as he maintained the part of him that he wanted and needed—Dana in her school play, Jess so youthful and vibrant, Chris only a baby—he told himself he would survive. Don't let go, don't give in, he repeated to himself. Then it's over.

And even as that reality faded, as he grew closer to another, became another boy's father and teacher, he held onto it. He was living a schizophrenic life, but anything else would have plunged him into mania.

And so, it seemed only fitting that, on the night in which he carved out a new reality, a new space in his mind for a new person and a new version of himself, that a horror would invade his dreams. Perhaps as punishment, a thundering karmic penalty for daring to shed all of these realities in foolish hope.

Because there he was, sitting just outside the courtyard, the Quran opened neatly in his hands, when a vulgar noise penetrated his ears. A bomb, an explosion, he could feel it shake his bones. The Quran clattered to the floor but he didn't even bother to pick it up. Only that boy, the sweet boy with big, brown eyes, big as that soccer ball he was always carrying around, mattered to him.

"Issa?" he called. When he heard no answer, he started to breathe faster, panic-stricken. "Issa?!" he called again, louder. And suddenly that fear, that fear overwhelmed him, hung above him like a mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb. Only it wasn't a bomb, it was a swarm of men, fifty or a hundred, or maybe only a dozen, he couldn't be sure. They surrounded him, wearing sneers and sinister smirks, holding sticks wrapped with barbed wire and screwrivers and nails and leather whips and pitchers full of water. Brody's eyes darted everywhere. _Where is Issa? Issa, where are you, goddammit?_ he thought. A million terrifying scenarios entered his thoughts. He was panting now, and he could feel himself sweating, beads of perspiration gathering across his forehead and chest.

And then, behind him, there he was, his shirt half untucked, clutching his soccer ball tightly. "I scored a goal!" he said with a thick accent.

Brody turned around sharply to see him. There he was. Suddenly the crowd of men stampeded over him, lunging for Issa, still smiling, still eager, so young. They trampled Brody, sparing him no pain, and grabbed the boy. "Issa, no!" Brody yelped as he heard his faint cries.

And then it dissolved. Brody turned his head. "You're with me," he heard. He snapped his head back. _Issa?_

There _she_ was, steady and calm, wide awake next to him. "You're with me," she said again. All of a sudden he realized her hand was on his cheek. She was holding him. He felt something on his hand and realized he was holding her, too, was clutching her. His arms were wrapped around hers.

"You're with me," she repeated, and he exhaled, so strongly it was as if a gust of wind had blown at her face. Her hair swept over her eyes. He exhaled deeply again. It was like he was learning how to do it. Sharp and painful. He could feel it in his chest. He could feel his heart, too, pounding so hard he could sense the vibrations throughout his body.

He exhaled again, released that pent-up pressure, and dropped his head to the pillow. He stared up, eyes wide, terrified.

"What happened?" he asked her. What had happened? He had no memory of what he had just dreamed, but that's how it usually was. He awoke in a panic, a slick sweat, completely overwhelmed in terror, but with absolutely no recollection of the thing that had caused it. It was like a phantom, which made it even more horrific.

"No, you're safe, you're not there. Everything's fine," she reassured him. She was stroking his cheek now, soothing him. Her voice was measured and restrained, a calming force. He held her arm and felt the smoothness of her skin. Yes, this was real. She was real. This was real.

"Everything's fine," she said again, more pleading this time, but all the same to him. He looked up at her, her face mostly mired in shadows. He wanted to cry. He could feel himself becoming calmer, though, and he could no longer feel his heart in his chest.

_Everything's fine_, he thought. _Everything's fine. I'm here. I'm safe. _She began to stroke his arm and then she kissed his shoulder. He felt that, too. _I'm safe. I'm here. Everything's fine. _

He rested his head on the pillow as she lay beside him, her chin propped on his chest. He closed his eyes and tried to return to something, to peace maybe. He could feel her all the while, still holding him, stroking his back methodically, in time with his own breathing.

He drifted into sleep, slowly but completely, and she stayed awake beside him, watching and listening, to make sure, still sliding her hand delicately up and down his back, for a while longer. And eventually she drifted into sleep, too.


	17. Part XVII

_Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who's read and offered feedback on this story. You know how it goes and we're getting to the climactic part in this Weekend. I'm working diligently on it right now and as soon as I finish and polish I'll have it up for everyone to read (but it's taking a while - I'm already at 4000 words and it's not nearly finished!). Thanks again and enjoy!_

* * *

Brody woke early the next morning from a thankfully and comfortably dreamless second sleep. He could tell it was early. The sky outside had a brightness to it that he knew well from many mornings waking just at dawn to pray in secret. The cabin was completely noiseless: an easy silence, so wondrously calm. He lay in bed for a few minutes, absorbing the last morsels of warmth from the blankets and from the heat of Carrie's body next to him.

He watched her sleep, eyes resting delicately, her grey t-shirt bunching up around her stomach. She looked angelic to him, which was a radical change to how he'd seen her before: reckless and wild, beautiful but certainly not innocent. But here sleeping, her hair strewn across her face, he had to fight himself not to push it out of her eyes, because he didn't want to wake her.

He suspected she didn't often sleep well, and after his nightmare last night, he felt a little guilty for disturbing her, hassling her. But she had seemed so ready for it, like she was suspecting it might happen. Maybe she had nightmares, too. Maybe this was par for the course.

Brody looked out the window and decided he would like to pray. To start this morning right, to center himself. He slowly and carefully slid out of bed and dressed silently. He was nervous about her waking. When he put on his watch he saw that it was later than he thought—nearly eight o'clock. How much longer would she sleep?

As he put his boots on quietly, lacing them up methodically, it occurred to him he could leave a note. Without making a sound, he walked over to the end table and opened the drawer in search of a pen and paper.

It was then that he saw it. The gun. Sitting there, askew, placed somewhat haphazardly.

It was an old revolver. He wondered how old it was. When was the last time it had been used? And why wasn't it in a case, locked up somewhere? It was all very strange but he found the pen and paper before he could give it a second thought. He was too focused on praying, making time before Carrie woke.

He took the pen and paper out and carefully closed the drawer. He walked into the kitchen and began to write.

_Carrie, _

_Went for a walk. Be back soon. _

He hovered over the last words.

_-Brody_

Still silently, he stepped over to the bed and placed the note on the pillow next to her. He grabbed an unused blanket from the basket by the bed and walked out the door and onto the porch. As he made his way away from the cabin, he couldn't help but look over his shoulder every few steps.

In his heart he felt that it would not matter to Carrie that he was a Muslim. He had converted in a time of despair and hopelessness and loss. He had found something when he was utterly lost. She would understand, he knew it. But he didn't feel ready. Not to tell her, not to tell anybody. This was still his. Even after everything had been taken from him, after everything had been opened up in him and shown to the world, he could still have this.

When he had walked for ten minutes he found a small patch of sand, looking right over the water, the sun reflecting brightly off the surface, and laid down the blanket. And he prayed. He prayed for peace for himself. He prayed for Carrie, too. For her to find peace, that elusive peace, and to be whole again. He thanked God for bringing her to him, to showing him some hope. She was not the light at the end of the tunnel, because in many ways she was just as damaged as he was. But she was a light—to guide him, to see him through. He felt that she would be there with him, and he thanked God for that, and prayed to help her, too.

He thought back to last night_. "You're with me, everything's fine,"_ she had said to him. He had grabbed hold of her hand on his arm and held it tight. He had been falling and she had held tight_. Thank you for bringing her to me_, he prayed.

When he was finished he put his socks and shoes back on, more quickly this time, shook the sand from off the blanket, and rolled it carefully back up, just the way he'd found it. He checked his watch; he'd only been gone thirty minutes, but he felt so intensely calm, so purely happy. He smiled to himself and concentrated on his careful breathing as he walked steadily back to the cabin, hoping to draw out this feeling for as long as it would last.

She was still sleeping when he walked back into the cabin. In fact he guessed she hadn't moved at all; her shirt was still scrunched at the waist, her hair still swept across her face. He picked up his note from off the pillow, folded it, and placed it in his pocket. He would keep it.

He sat down on the bed and, completely mindlessly, tucked the stray hair behind her ears, brushing her cheeks gently. She didn't move. He watched her sleep, studied the outline of her lips, the arch of her brow, even the way her hands wrinkled as they curled up beneath her. She was so calm. And she looked peaceful.

Then, suddenly—although somehow naturally—she opened her eyes, a swift movement, as if she hadn't just been in a deep sleep. She looked up at him, sitting there above her, smiling.

"You okay?" was the first thing she said to him, reaching a hand out, like she had in the night. He tilted his head to the side to see her better.

"Yeah, I'm good." She stroked his arm soothingly and turned, stretched out. She put on her jeans easily and sighed as he spread out on the bed, eyeing her curiously. It all felt so absurdly free and yet… forced, unnatural, like they were acting out the parts in a play. She slipped on her shoes effortlessly.

And like that she was there, back on, a vision of yesterday.

"So, I know we have oatmeal," she started casually. "Maybe frozen O.J.," she continued, walking into the kitchen, her back turned toward him. "But no Yorkshire Gold out here in the sticks, sorry," she said, eyeing him playfully and smiling. A knowing smile, he thought.

Because that was it. Yorkshire Gold. He latched onto it, clutched it feverishly, with all his might and power and every nerve ending in his body.

"What?"

It was too bizarre a reference to be coincidental. Right?

"Ugh, knowing my dad we're probably looking at Folger's and I'm _not_ kidding!" she joked, opening up a cabinet.

"How do you know the tea I drink?" he asked, ignoring what she had just said. He hadn't even listened. He was so focused on it: Yorkshire Gold. He tried not to sound too accusatory, too suspicious. But how did she know? Because it was too bizarre a reference to be coincidental. It was.

She stopped in her tracks, opened her eyes wide. Her heart dropped; she could feel it, just sink into her gut like stone, with a forceful and heavy thud. She felt her vocal cords seize up in her throat and forced herself to breathe but it came out in sharp pangs.

"I don't know," she began, replacing the bag of oatmeal she'd retrieved. More sharp pangs—her entire body felt hot, from her mouth down to her chest, even her feet felt sweaty.

"You probably had it at Langley," she said. It was the first thing she could think of and she said it quickly, probably too quickly. She shrugged casually, probably too casually, and looked back at him, eyeing her not that suspiciously.

She averted his eyes immediately, probably too immediately.

"Uh, I'm gonna get some wood. I'll be right back," she said with a hint of a smile, walking out of the cabin, taking care not to walk too fast. When she got out onto the porch, she sighed heavily and closed her eyes. A moment later she forced herself to open them.

She cursed herself. Repeatedly, over and over, what an idiot she'd been. Why had she said it? What in the _fuck_ had possessed her to mention Yorkshire Gold? She was furious with herself. How quickly the air had shifted, like a bomb had just dropped. Everything around them seemed to have seized up in tension. She could feel it and if she knew anything about him he had sensed it, too. Brody was nothing if not a sly motherfucker and she did not underestimate him.

That was it, too. How swiftly and without notice she had gone back to that. Brody, the sly and guileful motherfucker. Her target, her quarry. She had fucked it up. Had she done it on purpose? As she walked down to the dock where the woodpile was she felt that maybe she had. But she couldn't remember him ever drinking Yorkshire Gold. How did she know that was the tea he drank? She had watched him for countless hours, noting the way he put on his uniform after he showered, the times of night he went into that damned garage of his, the daily complaints of his two kids about their various schoolteachers. But his tea…

And then she cursed herself again. Why hadn't she thought of something better to say? "You probably had it at Langley." She clenched her teeth in fury. She knew too well that he had never had tea at Langley, that much was sure. A half dozen other sane, believable responses suddenly occurred to her, pouring down over her like a hailstorm. Any one of them would have fended off that foul expression on his face, his stupid furrow of a brow, his annoying squinting eyes. She felt repulsed by that face, and by herself. _You're a fucking moron_, she thought.

But maybe she had fended him off. Maybe he had believed her. Maybe she was projecting her own paranoia onto him. Maybe he had actually had tea at Langley. Maybe Carrie was dreaming this all and any minute _she_ would wake up in a panic and Brody would be there next to her.

But she was spinning in circles, arguing with herself, shifting abruptly from talking herself up to talking herself down. Her brain was flurried and she felt a bit of a contact high. Exhilaration. Again her thoughts shifted and she struggled to remember the last time she'd taken a pill. What day was it anyway?

She picked up one last log and added it to the pile of wood she was already cradling. She turned back to the cabin and began the ascent, repeating in her mind to breathe and stay calm. Any sense of panic or uneasiness in her would trigger it in him. This much she knew from working in the field with assets.

She reached the cabin and walked up the steps to the screen door, her breathing now back to normal. Still, she felt uneasy, her smile and relaxed face a somewhat perfect mask. Her gut still felt heavy and hot. Brody was sitting there at the table waiting for her as she walked through the door.

She felt like she walking to the stand in a trial, but she felt ready to put on a smile and convince him, show him, everything actually was fine, as she'd told him. She could distract him, make him coffee or breakfast. Or she could cajole him, she thought, which was the easier thing and likely more effective one, too. Just take him right here, maybe. That would allay any doubts. And it had worked before.

She placed the wood on the floor and looked at him, trying to extract anything he could, but his face was blank, expressionless.

"Hi," she sighed, smiling, a little seductively, walking casually over to him.

He smiled, that annoying impish grin, and she wanted to slap him. She smiled back.

"I didn't drink tea at Langley," he said assuredly.

A trial. Or maybe an execution.


	18. Part XVIII

_Author's Note: So, this is a doozy, all 7,260 words. I just wanted to thank everyone who is reading and has offered such great feedback on this story. This is the final chapter of "Weekend," but I'll be writing an epilogue that I hope to have up by the end of the weekend. Then it'll _really_ be over. I hope you enjoy. A quick note about this chapter, though... I chose to write it completely from Carrie's perspective as it mimics the audience's here (that is, when "The Weekend" originally aired, we were in Carrie's shoes during this interrogation and had to take everything that Brody said at face value)._

* * *

She was prepared when he said it—_I didn't drink tea at Langley_. She stopped right in front of him, looked curiously down at him, into his eyes. She furrowed her brow, scrunched up her face and tilted her head to the side, checking off all the "confused and oblivious" boxes.

"What?" she said, keeping her tone light and carefree. She could maybe still diffuse this bomb if she played her cards perfectly.

"Yorkshire Gold," he continued. He wasn't going to give up easily. Already he was raising his voice and she tried to convince herself that she wasn't paranoid for noticing. "That wasn't just a lucky guess." He said it with conviction, shaking his head, like he was chastising a child. The skin around his eyes wrinkled as he squinted up at her. It was all she could see in his face. She was so distracted by them, those wrinkles.

"Why does that matter?" she stammered, hunching her shoulders, still playing this perverse game of dumb. As she said it she immediately regretted it. Of course it mattered. Two little words had already obscured everything that had taken place these past two days, erased them, as if they never were, blacked out and never to be spoken of. Of course it mattered.

But she went along with it. If she removed the cool and calm façade she was putting up everything would crumble around them. As it was he was already starting to chip away but for her own sake at least, this was vital. She stuck her hands in her pockets and grinned halfheartedly.

"Were you watching me?" he asked, raising his eyebrows, and she swore she could hear the hurt in his voice. He was pleading with her to say no, to erase it, to take it back. _Please say no_, he seemed to say. He looked up at her like an abandoned dog, begging her to deny it.

And yet she felt, too, that he had already begun to piece together the parts to this puzzle, the puzzle he didn't even know existed until five minutes ago. He wouldn't have asked a question like that—_were you watching me?_—if he didn't already know the answer. Carrie felt the fury and anger rise up in her stomach like bile.

"I don't know what you mean" is what she said instead. Instead of saying yes, or just saying no. Instead she basically said nothing and looked all the guiltier for it. Where usually she would plow full steam ahead, pulling no punches, now she was decidedly reserved, dodging bullets instead of firing her own.

"I mean, did you spy on me?" The anger was rising in him, too, she could tell. Her half-assed responses were goading him, and she was trying with all her will to think of something to say that would calm him, allay his worst suspicions and fears.

"You are a spy, right?" he added, the venom dripping off every word. He said it like he was repulsed by the thought, of her being a _spy_—sneaking around like vermin and creeping through the cracks and feasting.

She shook her head quietly. "Brody, I—" she began. But she had nothing to say after that. What could she say? All of a sudden her mind went blank. He _had_ figured it all out. She was caught in a web of lies, red-handed and with absolutely nowhere to go. There was nothing to say or do now. And so all said was "Brody, I—"

And she said it with regret, shame. How had she wronged him like this? Betrayed his trust? She hated herself for it, for taking him here and showing him the waterfall and fucking him and then making love to him and sleeping next to him and acting normal and letting him in and getting this close.

And yet, at the same time, she hated him, too. Because didn't she believe he was not who he said he was. Didn't she believe he was a traitor—the enemy? Didn't she believe it so strongly and powerfully that she would risk her career and her life to uncover the truth? Hadn't she loaded that gun two nights ago, stuck the bullets in and hid it away? Yes, she hated him, too. She hated that ugly grin he wore, how he had let her in. What was wrong with her?

Before she could say anything else—although there wasn't more to say—he stood up in front of her, so close she stepped back.

"That's why we ran into each other at the support group, isn't it? Why you _slipped_ me your number in case I ever need to ask anything?" he hissed, snarling. His words were malicious, the disgust wiped across his face. His lip curled upward as he said it.

"No, you're wrong, Brody," she said clearly and fully. She put real heart into it. Because he was wrong… partly. She wouldn't be able to explain it correctly. She had not done those things to spy on him but rather _because_ she was spying on him. She hated to admit it but thirty days of sleepless nights and days spent watching him on those parallel screens had infiltrated him into her life—and her into his—so completely that when she closed her eyes she still saw his visage. And so when those screens went black, that part of her went missing. She went searching for it in him… in him in the rain, in him at the bar, in him here, too.

But he could never understand that, she told herself.

"Yeah, don't fucking lie to me, Carrie!" he shouted, the volume of his voice seeming to push her back forcefully, like a tidal wave. She was taken aback by his anger. He was so angry. She opened her eyes wide to take it in. He was seething now, furious. He clenched his jaw tightly and breathed in through his nose, like an agitated monster.

He looked down at her expectantly. She could not tell him the real truth, the heart of it, because it would seem like a lie. Now the taint of betrayal hung over them like a smothering blanket. Everything they had built was now scattered around them like ashes, burnt and dead.

"It was my job," she began, and he breathed in so deeply and heavily she thought he might explode. She could see him holding in his fury, his rage, she could see it in his eyes. Suddenly she became indignant. She couldn't lose sight of the reason why it was her job. "It _is_ my job," she corrected, more forcefully now. The fury was rising in her, too.

"So you're still spying?" he said, smirking, throwing on that idiotic grin. The fury bubbled over in her as he stared down at her patronizingly.

"I'm working! I'm always working!" Which had been true two days ago.

"On what suspicion?" he yelled, vaulting her words back at her.

She looked up at him, her eyes wide and intense, and debated telling him. How could she tell him? How could she not? She was trapped, like an animal, trapped on this porch with Brody goading her and yelling at her like a helpless, moronic child.

"Tell me goddamit!" he roared. And he _roared_, beastly, the rage boiling up and over like a volcano erupting.

She jumped back in fear, a reflex, as he stepped toward her. He towered over her, strong and capable, his face growing red in terror. How different he had seemed yesterday standing over her by the bed. The fire had lit his face red then, too.

She felt her breathing quicken, her heart seize up. She was trapped. She winced and started toward the door. She remembered the gun in there, and hadn't she loaded it for this very purpose?

But he lunged toward her, slamming the door shut with one hand and reaching behind his back with the other.

"Looking for this?" he whispered, revealing the pistol, his fingers wrapped around the trigger so comfortably it was as if he owned the thing. He had figured everything out. How had he done that?

In their push-pull of control he had taken over the reigns so swiftly and fully she hardly even noticed. This was his power play. How had he done that, too?

She struggled to catch her breath as he looked down at her. He was not pointing the barrel at her but he held it so casually—he was so unfazed—that she could barely breathe. Her adrenaline kicked in as she realized how precariously they were balancing across this tightrope—not easing across it but running, with nothing below to catch them—to catch her—if they lost hold.

As she studied his face, still straining to breathe, her heart pounding so hard she could feel it in her throat, she realized she had to tell him. There was a gun in his hands. She had to tell him, because there was a gun in his hands and he had figured out everything else. She swallowed hard and looked at the gun, then back up at him.

In her wildest dreams she never imagined this would ever happen. That she would reveal this intelligence to him, reveal to him who she really was and who she believed he really was, too. It was so completely preposterous to even ponder the thing that she didn't even know how to articulate what she believed. She still believed it, she did, but mixed with _Brody_ and this gun and him looming over her with his finger clutching the trigger and his nightmare and the waterfall and the cameras and polygraph, seeing his scars and kissing them sweetly, the gun and laying next to him, so close she could feel his heart beating, too… She still believed it, and she believed all those things, too. She had not forgotten. She believed in spite of herself and in spite of him, too. In spite of him. Perhaps it no longer mattered.

Of course it mattered.

She took a deep breath, her heart slowing down but still racing, her brain perking up to meet it. "Abu Nazir's bomb maker told me an American prisoner of war _had been turned_. And he was coming home to carry out an attack."

It sounded preposterous when she said it, too, especially when he was standing above her, his eyebrows raised, incredulous. His eyes darted from side to side as he realized what she had just said, took in the weight of it.

"And you believed this?" he asked her.

"He told me minutes before he was executed."

"So?" he countered.

"So he was my prisoner, I interrogated him for months. He was cooperating at the end. There was no reason for him to lie." Reason. It invaded her every thought, her every waking minute, even as her brain was humming along, heightened. Because there was no reason for him to lie, wasn't there?

She remembered speaking to Ibrahim through the prison walls, telling him they would be snapping his neck any minute now. He had told her he had valuable information before she failed to commute his sentence, hadn't he? Before she threatened to leave his family out for dead, to let them rot? The order of events jumbled in her mind with Brody standing there before her, sneering at her, pinning her to the wall, his body and hers and the pistol forming a perverse triangle of imprisonment.

"And you think I'm that POW?" he asked her, still disbelieving. She could sense the hurt in his voice. How could she think that? How could she believe that and have kissed his shoulder last night and comforted him and offered him solace and clutched him so close in the firelight? This dichotomy confused her—because it lacked reason. How could she believe in two realities so riotously separate?

She began to shake her head, the logic prevailing. "There's no one else it could be," she said, licking her lips, which had become dry in the heat of that gun hanging limp from Brody's hand, now out of sight, but the casualness with which it loomed enlarging it in her consciousness.

"You're telling me the fucking CIA thinks I'm working for Al Qaeda?" he shouted, the whispers he was speaking in dissolving before them. He brought the gun back up to eye level and walked ahead of Carrie, pacing across the porch, processing this bomb she'd just dropped.

But she hadn't dropped it, not yet anyway. She frowned and furrowed her brow as she prepared to do it. She inhaled sharply and turned toward him, feeling like she was about to cry, scared and sad and enraged and… was that relief?

She felt her face quiver as she prepared to say it. She was holding it in her hands—_this_ was a bomb—and the fuse was burning quickly. She had lit it only a few moments ago, decided to anyway. She knew that when she let it go it would obliterate everything. The betrayal was already there, or shades of it at least, grey ashes scattered below their feet, dark and cold. But this was sinister and monstrous. She felt at once that she could not say it and that she _had_ to. It would detonate at any second.

"_I_ think you're working for Al Qaeda." Her voice shook with every syllable and when she had finished she stared at him in defiance. She had just set it off and it was like the aftermath when no one knew what had just happened. Like when the first tower had been hit and people had gathered in the second to survey the wreckage, point and whisper to each other, and say a silent prayer for the victims and for themselves.

He looked back at her and the color drained from his face, from his eyes, too, which looked sunken and seemed to retreat into him. She straightened herself and never broke her gaze. She stood there before him, bold and unmoving. She would not waver.

He scoffed at her, waving the gun around, gesturing with it. It became seared to his body, punctuating his very presence. She kept her gaze, though, even as the gun flashed around her, making her uneasy.

He looked away from her. They were separated now by a vast expanse, a gulf of space that seemed to echo what had just happened. That artificial closeness, and then the actual closeness that followed, was gone now, destroyed, never to be salvaged. He looked smaller to her, standing farther away. But that gun had seemed to grow in size.

"What about the gun, Carrie?"

She was startled by his abrupt shift in conversation. He said it casually, almost, which seemed somehow fitting. Because now he pointed it outward, straight at her. "Bears? Intruders?" he added. She looked down at it, the first time she'd looked away from him since she'd said it. She flinched as its aim came to align straight with her heart. She knew it was no coincidence. He was brandishing it before her, teasing her.

"We just keep it in the cabin," she said, shaking her head. Their voices were quiet now, restrained, a comedown after the explosion.

"Plus, you never know when a terrorist might darken your door," he added sarcastically and it revolted her.

"I never said terrorist, I said _turned_." She struggled with the distinction but wanted to make it clear anyway. Because he hadn't done anything yet (or had he?).

"If that were true," he started, his snarl returning to his face. "If any of this were true…" he gestured, revulsion seeping through his words now, too, "wouldn't I just kill you right now?" He pointed the gun at her and… was that a smile?

"Not if you're playing the long game." She said it immediately and then struggled to hear her words, because she didn't remember thinking them first. It was instinct then, to say that, and she didn't even know if she believed it. Because she was still fixated on that pistol. She shrugged, mimicking his casualness, as much an act of insolence as of self-preservation.

He looked at her, measuring his breaths, the fury rising in him again. He brought the pistol up before them and looked at it, gestured toward her. And then he set it on the table.

Carrie exhaled; she didn't even realize she'd been holding her breath but when she let go it was like a stream of life just eased out of her. She eyed the abandoned and loaded pistol now.

"Ask me anything," Brody said, and she looked up at him, for she hadn't even been listening.

"What?" She must have misheard him. She shook her head in disbelief.

"There's the gun," he started, pointing at it. "Hold it to my fucking head and ask me anything you want to know." He was sitting down at the table now, his arms out before him, folded obediently like a good little schoolboy. "I'll show you how _wrong_ you are," he added emphatically.

So she hadn't misheard him. If this was a dare she was going to take it. It struck her that she wasn't at all prepared to do this—this makeshift interrogation—and she wondered how long he had known (he had found the gun after all) and how much more prepared for this he was.

But if this was a dare, she was going to take it. She walked over to the table and sat down across from him. That gulf still existed between them. Carrie looked down at the revolver and pushed it aside. It wouldn't come between them. If it were just the two of them, then it would be just the two of them, stripped and bare. She would lay it all out for him. She wouldn't fire _those_ bullets.

Carrie maintained eye contact with him all the while and she noted that he looked away the minute she sat down. She was a trained interrogator and had done this countless times before, but for a second she forgot completely where to begin. He looked so small there, out in front of her. When he looked back to her, she began.

"Afsal Hamid." Was this a question or a statement? She did not know but it was the first name that came to mind and also the most pressing matter on her attention.

"What about him?" Brody asked, annoyed.

"Did you slip him the razor blade in the safe house?" she continued, the words spilling out of her mouth.

"How could I do that?" he said, throwing his hands up in the air.

"Answer the question," she ordered.

"No."

She looked back at him with wide eyes. But had she expected him to say yes? She realized she would have no way of knowing definitively whether he was telling the truth. She would need to rely instead on catching him in sure lies.

"But I wish I had," Brody continued. "And I hope he bled slowly… and died in a lot of pain." He said that with the same venom he'd directed at her before. So was that it? Was she his torturer now, his keeper? Did he hate her the way he hated him, the man who'd beaten him to the verge of death and then pulled back before exacting the swift act of mercy? Did he hate her that much? It hurt her to think that. So she struck back.

"Who's Issa?" she said. This would be a curveball, and she knew it, because she'd heard that name last night but never before that, and he had no recollection of saying it at all.

He flinched when she said the name and she latched onto that. She sucked the discomfort from him like a leech sucks blood. "Where do you hear that name?" He shifted in his seat.

"Who is he?" she pressed, narrowing her eyes.

"He was my guard, he was nice to me," he answered. So he had dodged that one, but she came back firing for round three.

"What goes on in your garage?" She was spitting out questions rapid-fire. This was the most effective way to get valuable information. Bombard the suspect with queries and you're bound to get lucky. She sprinkled this one in to throw him off. Hamid, Issa, garage. Like Saul with Hamid she must exercise complete omnipotence. If she knew all, then there was nothing he couldn't tell her.

"My garage?"

"You said ask anything," she said, offering a small but halfhearted laugh.

He glanced to the side. She noticed the same discomfort over Issa return. "I take the trash bins in and out. Fix a bicycle sometimes." His jaw was locked as he said it.

_Bullshit_, she wanted to say. She poked again. "Why do you go there so late at night? So early in the morning?" She knew it was more than taking the fucking trash out and he didn't seem like the most avid cycler. She applauded herself for realizing he was lying then but it occurred to her that it was because of her in-depth surveillance that she had caught him here, not because he had given anything away in his face. In fact his entire expression was blank and devoid of emotion. Dead or else completely lifeless. She believed there was a difference.

So she had cornered him here but how was she to know the difference about anything that had happened over there, in Iraq? For all she knew he was lying about Issa and everything else that had gone on.

He swallowed once before answering. "To pray."

She exhaled, prepared to ask a follow-up, when he began touching his fingers together, like she'd shown Saul so many weeks ago. She pounced.

"What is that?" she asked, nearly shouting, pointing to his swiftly moving fingers.

He stopped and threw his hand up. "Nothing." He looked away. She didn't even feel guilty for calling him on it, like he was perverse, a freak.

"No, it's not nothing." She knew it was not nothing. Nothing did not look like that.

"It's a habit, when I don't have my prayer beads," he said, resigned, shrugging. He didn't look at her at he said it, and she thought she even detected a hint of shame there, too.

She raised her eyebrows. The dots began to connect in her head. Prayer beads, habit, garage. "You're a Muslim?" she said incredulously. She couldn't even contain her smile because it seemed so outlandish, so bizarre, that this red-haired American soldier was a Muslim.

He looked up at her, straight into her eyes. He nodded. "Yeah."

She blinked, straightened her face out. It struck her just how much she really didn't know about him. She'd believed she had figured it all out, had figured him out. But she didn't really know. She didn't know anything.

"You live in despair for eight years you might turn to religion, too." She stared at him quizzically, hanging on his every word. But she felt sorry for him, because she could hear the shame in his voice, she could feel it.

"And the King James Bible was not available," he added. Carrie felt sick. Here he was, telling her about the salvation he'd found in Islam, divulging this extraordinary secret to her. It held greater weight than anything he'd told her yesterday, anything about his wife and children, about feeling lost and adrift. He was telling her. He had decided to tell her.

And yet her thoughts went straight to Iraq and Al Qaeda. She had so many more questions. How had he found a Quran? When had he turned to religion? Did anyone else know while he was a prisoner? She wanted to ask them all, but Brody turned away and looked out to the water. It was like the physical heft of this secret had gutted him and now it was sitting out before them, languishing in this vast expanse, and he couldn't even look at it. She wondered whether he'd ever told anyone about this. She wanted to ask him that, too.

She leaned back in her chair a little, put her hands on her hips, and surveyed her options. She could probe further, learn more about the conversion, but couldn't bear that helpless, defeated look on his face. He looked drained just from saying it.

But maybe it didn't matter. Maybe Islam had not radicalized him. He certainly wasn't a strictly devout Muslim. After all, he'd fucked her and drunk so much bourbon and vodka with her he could hardly stand straight.

She decided to move on, partly out of pity for him—how strangely her sentiment toward him seemed to turn on its head at a moment's notice, without warning—and partly because she felt it wasn't the heart of the thing.

"Why did they kill Walker and not you?" she asked. That was the heart of the thing. She felt so strongly that was the heart of it.

"You asked me that in the debrief," he said, averting her stare, fiddling with his fingers again.

"Yeah, and you were evasive."

"It doesn't matter."

"I'll decide that."

"You don't need to know."

"I need to know _everything_."

She said it from the pit of her stomach, from deep inside her heart and every synapse in her brain. He looked right at her and their eyes locked. She studied him but his face remained blank. All she could see were wrinkles. In his shirt, from his hunched over back, above his eyes on his forehead, around his lips where the creases framed his mouth. The wrinkles made him look tired and disheveled. He seemed to be shrinking with each passing moment, while she only became more heightened, in every sense. Her assertiveness seemed to dwarf him. He looked so tired.

He swallowed hard and then said, "I killed him." His voice was shaking.

She narrowed her gaze. What did that mean? She was confused. What was he talking about? _I killed him_: what did he mean? She leaned forward, as if a single disappearing inch between them would make her understand.

"Okay? _I_ killed him." His voice was hardly above a whisper, quivering and hoarse. He paused and she swore the silence lasted an entire minute. She let the words wash over her. _I killed him._

She thought back to the polygraph: _"Have you ever killed a man?"_ Yes, he had answered, and he hadn't skipped a beat. She thought back to the memorial for Tom Walker: _"Tom Walker was a good man,"_ he had said, standing before his platoon and Tom's wife and son and his own family.

_I killed him._ The words echoed in her head and she was still struggling to understand when he began again.

"They told me to beat him to death… or be killed myself." He exhaled, said it in a single breath, like a final gasp for air. "And so I did it." His voice was trembling, his lips so thin and shaking after every syllable. He stared down at his hands. "And I vowed to never tell another living soul." He looked up at the final word, straight at her, seeming to plead with her, with her soul and with his own.

She swallowed hard as he said it. How much more didn't she know? She kept her eyes locked on him as he looked out again to the water. Here was another thing he'd offered to her and it now sat, heavy and still before them, splayed out like the dead body it was.

She felt that if she was a better person, compassionate and empathic and good and whole, she would have stood up and walked over to him. She would have embraced him and said, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." She would have offered him comfort and she would have kissed him tenderly on his lips and held his hand until he stopped shaking.

But she was not, and so she said, "Who told you to kill him?"

"Abu Nazir," he answered immediately, like he was just about to say it. Maybe he would have said it anyway, even if she hadn't asked. He answered without looking at her. Here was something else he was offering. Before it had just been the two of them, sitting across from each other at this table, on opposite ends of the desert. But every time she asked a question and he answered, something else appeared between them, obscuring the view, obscuring the real thing. And he became smaller, too.

She sat up straight in her chair when he said it—_Abu Nazir_—straighter than she realized her back could be. Hearing those letters and those sounds come out of his mouth tinged something deep at the back of her mind, like an alarm had sounded and all systems were go. Perhaps _this_ was the heart of it.

And yet every time she thought that—Hamid, Issa, garage, Walker—he seemed to come up with something more. She couldn't tell if this was a good thing or a bad thing, for her perspective was so skewed.

"So you did meet him," she said with a flourish.

He turned to meet her. "Yes."

All of a sudden a rage and righteousness took hold of her, gripped her tightly and around her spine, straightening it more. "You lied to us about meeting one of the leaders of Al Qaeda?" It sounded more preposterous as the words exited her mouth.

"That's right," he answered. And all of a sudden a righteousness seemed to grab him, too. He was goading her, maybe.

"You wanna explain that?" she shot back.

He paused for a moment. "I was embarrassed." He said it simply and, ironically, shamelessly. "Ashamed."

Was he asking for pity from her? For a shoulder to cry on? The thought sickened her when just a moment before she had been chastising herself for being so selfish. But what he was saying did not equate logically with her.

"Why?"

"Because he offered me comfort… and I took it." He returned to whispers now, and as he swallowed hard and hung his head again—in shame, in sadness, in who the fuck knew what else—she realized this was the heart of it.

"And you became his follower?" she began, speaking now in whispers, too. "A soldier in his jihad?"

But he winced at that. _A soldier in his jihad_. "No… no, Jesus. Don't you understand anything I'm telling you?"

She thought she did. She knew how monsters like Nazir worked. Breaking a soldier down, weakening a man, and taking out the parts that were of no use to him. And then he would place himself at the center, as the father or the savior or the man with the answers. He would mold him into something not close to a man but rather a drone, robotic and mindless and powerless but for the ability to strike and to kill. This was how he worked.

"I'm not made of that stuff… I'm no hero." He paused. She struggled to understand how he could see a terrorist working for Al Qaeda as a hero. Before she could say anything he started again. "I had nothing to _give_… I was broken, living in the dark, for years. And a man walked in." He began to smile. Was that a smile? Yes, it was a smile, full and hearty. "And he was _kind_ to me."

He stopped, opened his mouth but no words came out. She leaned forward a little and as he whispered, "And I loved him," so softly and his voice trembling, she felt her entire body tighten. She realized he was no longer looking at her but just staring, his eyes glazed over, like they'd been washed in milk.

She saw the tears well up in his eyes and wondered where they came from. From the sorrow at divulging this, his dark and shameful love for this man? Or from the love spilling up and over out of him, brought back from the depths of his heart and taking the breath out of him so swiftly that he could not see, could not hear, could not speak.

Carrie felt embarrassed for him and for herself, a witness to this man's breaking. She had broken him. She had poked everywhere it mattered and everywhere it hurt and he had given in and was crying now, silently pleading for mercy. _Make it stop._

A tear fell down his cheek and he let it sit there, dangling from his chin before wiping it away. He inhaled deeply and blinked. Another tear fell.

She had no idea what to say now. What could she say? He had just bared his soul to her—or something like it—and any thought or question that occurred to her seemed so callous in comparison. She could feel herself being manipulated and yet she felt powerless to stop it.

As he shifted in his seat and looked out again to the water, she thought that this man, sitting before her, his face stained with tears, could not be a terrorist, could not be turned. The man who'd woken in a sweat, shouting for a phantom, evading the dark recesses of his consciousness. The man who'd held her close as she'd unraveled beneath him and shivered himself when she touched a hand to his scarred chest. The man who'd stepped so close to her she could feel the heat radiating from his body and asked her whether they could do this. The man who was so broken and dejected and hollow and alone that, in spite of himself, came to love any who showed him compassion.

She had shown him compassion and tenderness and so had Nazir, and they had that in common. They had him in common.

How could this man be a monster and yet all of these other things? It did not make sense, it did not follow reason or logic or sound thinking.

And yet…

Carrie had started to say something a half dozen times in the moments after Brody had wiped away his tears. She started again but he began first. "So we done here?" His voice was firmer now. He had composed himself quickly and abruptly, and in that moment Carrie realized that reason and logic and sound thinking had no place here—with her and with him and with them together and on this porch with the pistol and by that fire.

Because she had taken him here and showed him these parts of herself and placed the kernel of her conviction at the back of her mind and allowed herself to be normal and to feel him and to see him. That was not logical. That was not sound.

She had not forgotten. Her belief had become such a part of her that it was impossible to forget. It had weaved itself into the fabric of her being. It had come to define her. She had not forgotten but she had hidden it away, placed it behind her back, like a child crossing her fingers when telling a lie.

But now it came roaring back, as all lies eventually do, coming blaringly to light, and to reconcile it with her and him and them together was to defy logic. To make the impossible, possible. She was at an impasse.

"Well, you have an answer for everything." She nodded her head, seeming to applaud him for a job well done. They had reached a stalemate and neither was budging, not even an inch.

"But you still don't believe me." He seemed to echo her very thoughts.

"I know an American POW was turned, it has to be you." This was the heart of it, the kernel, the truth, and the conviction and as she said it—_you_—she realized the incongruences of her two realities.

He looked at her, leaned back in his seat, relaxed even, and sighed. A heavy sigh.

Just then her phone began to vibrate on the table behind her. It was the first foreign noise she'd heard all morning, the first sign of civilization, the beacon of her former self—or her actual self, she was not sure.

"I'm leaving," Brody said, folding his hands together.

"No, we're not finished." And yet there was nothing else to say, but she felt her grip on him loosening. Hadn't he just seemed so small before? Maybe this was actually a checkmate. Maybe he had won.

"Yeah, we're finished." He stood up and headed for the door. "You wanna arrest me you can come to my house."

"No! Brody!" she shouted, gasping, flailing. He had pushed her off the tightrope now and she was falling further into a vast abyss as he hovered above her, jeering, surveying the damage.

"Or maybe you wanna shoot me now," he sneered. She had forgotten completely about the gun. It was still loaded.

She stopped, his words tearing at her insides and she felt like she might be sick. His eyes shot out at her like gamma rays, searing and singeing. She sighed and felt helpless before him, now towering again. How quickly that had changed. He was no longer small.

He got one last look at her—maybe he had been expecting her to shoot; she wasn't playing the long game, after all—and turned on his heels.

"Brody!" she called behind him as he walked away. As he stepped off the porch, walked down the steps and toward his car, it was as if a veil lifted. She no longer felt like she was falling. A safety net had caught her and she was feeling around for something solid to grab hold of and steady herself.

Once he stepped off that porch, it was like the trance dissolved. The second tower had fallen and the dust began to settle and it was silent. There were no sirens and she could have been dead were it not for the sharp pangs in her stomach telling her no, she was very alive. Once he had walked away, they could stop fooling themselves. She could take that new reality and fold it up and place it behind her, crossing her fingers and forgetting about it for now—or forever—and as his back edged farther away from her she turned to pick up her buzzing phone, evidence of that returning, older, and still humming reality.

_SAUL – Mobile_, her phone flashed. Yes, Saul, the anchor of the familiar reality. How fitting he would be calling her now, calling out to her, to come back.

"Saul," she answered, harried and out of breath.

"You were wrong about Brody," he told her. His voice was solemn and calm, measured, just how she remembered. (It had only been two days but it was like she had forgotten.)

Her heart seized up in her. She tried to form words but nothing came out. "What, what do you mean?" she finally managed. Her mind began to race again, faster than before, a dozen thoughts and questions and retorts blending together. She caught Brody looking back at her as he climbed in his car.

"A POW was turned, but it wasn't him."

_An American prisoner of war has been turned_. Her words echoed in her head and she tried to reconcile them with what Saul had just told her. "I—I don't understand." She began pacing up and down the porch.

"Aileen just ID'd Tom Walker. The other soldier captured with Brody." Carrie's heart fell in her chest, seemed to fall right out of her completely. And in its wake nothing was left. Just hollowness. Just emptiness.

"Tom Walker died," she began, raising her voice in an attempt to steady it. Hadn't Brody just said that he killed him? Hadn't he just said that? Had she imagined it? There was nothing to hold onto around her, just emptiness and space and black vastness.

"No," Saul countered. "He's alive. He's the terrorist."

Carrie stopped breathing for a second. She stood, frozen, her eyes wide and mouth hanging open.

_Terrorist, turned, Tom Walker, Nazir, Brody, Sergeant Brody, I killed him, turned, to pray, shoot me now, I'm no hero. _

They rushed over her, screaming back like a tsunami. This was the thing, this was the heart of it. How wrong she had been. How wrong. How so very wrong. She felt her face grow hot and her nose grow cold and tears began to well in the corners of her eyes.

She mumbled "shit," hung up the phone, and stumbled out the door, running to Brody, running to him. How so very wrong. "Brody," she called as he turned on the engine. "Wait!"

He turned to her out the front window, his jaw clenched tightly, looking at her with the most vile mixture of hate and hurt. She felt sick.

"I, I was wrong," she stammered. "I, I made a… _terrible_ mistake."

"Don't you think I don't already know that?" He was so disgusted, the revulsion seeped out of him, out from his pores, colored his face and changed him.

"I'm sorry, I am _so_ sorry."

He stared up at her expectantly. What she didn't know was that nothing she could say would ever be good enough, could ever right this wrong, could ever bring them back to their idyll, to the wholeness they had built, because it was broken and destroyed and a giant crater stood where they once did. It was tainted and burnt and ugly, a fresh and gaping wound that would scar when it healed, eventually, but would always be there as a reminder of this terrible mistake.

She sighed, pleading with him, struggling to compose herself, because his eyes were like daggers stabbing straight into her and she could never say how sorry she felt, would never be able to articulate it. "This weekend, this time that we spent together, it _was_ real. The parts that—that we both—the important parts."

It was a jumbled sentiment, convoluted and messy, and she looked at him, her eyes obscured in shadows, begging him silently to reach out and offer her comfort and forgiveness. She was at his mercy now, helpless, the chastised child once again.

Instead he gave her one last look and whispered, "Hey Carrie, fuck you."

And then he drove off, leaving a wake of dust and emptiness behind him. Carrie stood there, hands in her pockets, mouth agape, like she had just come up for air, like the people who had been caught in the streets when the towers fell and had nowhere to go and nothing to do but wait for the debris to settle, for the sirens to sound again, for the blanket of white ash to be washed away.

She swallowed hard and looked around her, at this vast and lonely emptiness that engulfed her. She choked on her tears and began to cry, meandering down toward the water, like she was drunk, a perfect reenactment of just two days ago, after she had loaded the gun and come down to meet him, the buzz of tequila still simmering just below the surface.

She ran her fingers through her hair and caught the back of her neck. She seemed to swivel and sway weakly in the wind there. She struggled to breathe, the circumstance of her reality settling in and surrounding her. The anxiety and panic draped over her just like that white ash.

She wept, silently and alone, for what she had lost.


	19. Epilogue

Many months—and heartbreaks and breakdowns, tears, deaths, and reincarnations—later, she brought him back. She needed to be there with him again. She needed for the last thing she remembered there not to be the look of disgust and hurt on his face as he said to her, "Fuck you."

So she brought him back. This was her ground zero, the site of so much destruction and loss and gutting pain. But there was a kernel of hope there, too, rising from the ashes. The thought had occurred to her, to take him back, many times since, mostly in times of loneliness: nights spent, eyes wide open, in the psychiatric ward; or, when he reentered her life, as she told him they could be a way out for each other.

She remembered again, brought back the thought from the depths of her mind, late at night as she laid awake sleepless, visions of Nazir and his cool silver gun pressed against her forehead plaguing her whenever she dared close her eyes.

She turned over on her side and saw him, sleeping there, one arm draped over her waist. He had slept there the past two nights, since he'd knocked on her door and pressed a hand to her bruised cheek.

"Brody," she whispered, drawing her head up and grazing his ears with her lips. "Brody."

He stirred in his sleep, opening his eyes abruptly. "What's the matter?" he asked, surprisingly alert.

"Let's go to the cabin tomorrow." She smiled at him, felt a little guilty for waking him at two in the morning.

He blinked once or twice. "Okay," he nodded. He kissed her on the nose and pulled her closer. She let herself melt into him, let his warmth envelop her, let her breathing fall into sync with his.

The next day when they arrived at the cabin, it was like she had been transported back in time. Him, too. "It's all coming back to me," he said with a heavy sigh as they walked up to the porch.

"The good, the bad, the ugly?" she mused.

What Carrie and Brody both came to realize, separately and independently, was that that fateful weekend seemed to imbed itself into their very being, burrowed and buried. Brody had folded up everything it came to symbolize in The Mythology of Carrie and Brody and stuck it in his pocket, like the note he had written to Carrie on that Sunday morning. _Be back soon_, he had written, and as they drove silently back up to the cabin he realized how prophetic it had been.

More than just being a constant presence, the weekend seemed to haunt them, looming over them like a great black cloud, always threatening to unleash a torrent of rain and soak them in the sadness and ecstasy it had brought them.

When Brody had arrived home late that night, his house quiet and dark and so empty to him, he wept into his hands, too. She had been so right. How had she been so right, he asked himself. She had really seen him and now he had lost her. He cried until his eyes stung and then he wiped his cheeks and slept.

That was the last time Brody allowed himself to think about the weekend. When he returned, free of her presence, he refocused himself on his true mission. He was a man on a mission. He condensed those two days into a singular atom and stowed it away, out of sight and out of mind, because he knew himself. He knew that if he opened it up, everything would fall apart. And it nearly did.

And as much as Brody made the weekend become invisible to him, Carrie focused on it so intensely that it came to represent something larger than life. Larger than it ever was or ever could be. It became the true beacon of her existence. "I remember thinking I was exactly where I belonged," she revealed to Brody in their second interrogation.

The peace and wholeness she felt then, and their swift disappearance thereafter, began to eat away at her. Once she got a taste for it, she became insatiable. Nothing else would do.

She began to concentrate her entire energy on getting back to that, to that wholeness. "I'm going to be alone my whole life, aren't I?" she asked Saul not long after she returned. The fear crippled her. To be alone was to be incomplete, mere pieces. She focused herself intently on evading this loneliness. First she tried to rekindle her relationship with Brody. And when that failed and—ironically—spurred her hunger further, made her love him, despite her best efforts, she trained her eye inward.

"I can't live like this," she told Saul, lying in that yellowed hospital room, her eyes sunken in, her entire body sunken in, too, a shell of its former self. She had forced herself into the electroconvulsive therapy to cure herself not just of her illness but of her loneliness, too, which itself was a supremely more debilitating malady.

As she closed her eyes and allowed the drugs to wash over her, the weekend revisited her for a final time in all its immaculate vividness. She never wanted to wake. Couldn't she just _live here_, forever?

But the electricity had driven the memories out of her brain—cruelly or mercifully, she couldn't be sure. Over time details of those days slipped away, like sand through open fingers. Had they been drinking vodka or silver tequila? What color had his shirt been? Had he pointed the gun straight at her?

After she discovered she'd been right—so right—the quest for wholeness drove itself back into her mind. She could achieve it with him, she told herself, instead of from within. It was an ugly tradeoff, one she felt guilty of, but it was sweet and addictive and she had to have it. She would do anything for it. The insatiable desire woke up from inside her, like a sleeping giant, and affected every thought and action and motivation she had.

In that second interrogation, deep down in those pits that she knew must resemble the prisons Brody had been trapped in for eight years, she spoke of the weekend for the first time.

"We were playing each other," he said to her, his indignant words like daggers.

But she was expecting it. She was wholly prepared. Unlike last time, when she never knew how he would respond, now she knew what he would say before he did. This interrogation was a masterpiece. She was an artist, painting with him. He was her medium, and he could do nothing about it.

She told Saul and Peter later that she'd only said those things_—"That's the Brody I met up in that cabin, that's the Brody I fell in love with"_—to get him to break. Which was true. It was very true. Too often they viewed tactics as either calculated or true. This was both; it was grey when they were expecting black or white. But Carrie lived in the greyness; she thrived there.

When Carrie became Brody's handler (so apt and yet so outrageously false), the pain she saw in him at the two realities he was maintaining, just barely, poked a nerve. He had controlled it so much better last time. He had been able to transition from one Brody to the other so seamlessly. But now he was haggard and harried. The wrinkles in his face became more visible to her. She imagined she had aged a lot in the past six months also.

But that was it with them: the constant balance of two realities. The man who put on that vest, the soldier and the hero. Brody with Carrie, Brody with everyone else. And Carrie, caught between hating this man so deeply and loving him so profoundly it made her bones ache. She often wondered whether she hated him so much that she loved him, or if she loved him so much she hated him. Eventually she came to think of her love and hate for him as a singular thing, continuous, rather than a sequence of events. The hate did not precede the love, or vice versa. The hate was the love.

They were a bundle of contradictions trapped in each other's unraveling nerves and that brought them closer—to each other, yes, but also to insanity, certain death. They were entangled in each other, nooses wrapped around the other's heart and necks and something was bound to snap eventually. It was a sweet, intoxicating misery. Carrie felt she could not live without it.

"We could be happy," Brody said to her, right there on that porch, the memorial to the beginning of the end. Or the end of the beginning. Again, Carrie could not tell and she began to see it the same way. The end and the beginning ceased to exist on a plane, one after the other. They existed as one, forming something altogether infinite or else completely nonexistent.

Carrie looked into him, her expression so skeptical and yet so hopeful. "Imagine that," she smiled, and her smile faded almost instantly, just dissolved. This was it, this was what she had wanted. Brody, happiness, closeness, wholeness. This was everything.

And yet she felt she could not part with the sweet misery.

When it was done and finished—_complete_—and she drove in silence and perfect isolation back to Saul, Carrie went over every wall she had ever put up around her—for defense, for security, for anything at all—and checked off every one she had ever taken down for Brody. Every one she had given up to him. Her mother, her father, her disease, her sanity, Iraq, eventually her job, and all the while her whole heart. _Completely_. It was complete and _she_ had nothing left to give.

It was scary, letting down those walls, giving it up to him. Because at the end she was empty, empty without him and how could she go on? He would have all of her. He _did_ have all of her. Her worst fears had been confirmed. She knew it was too easy to give up that misery. It was all just too easy.

When she had driven for a few hours and felt her eyes growing heavy she stopped in a motel parking lot and climbed into the passenger's seat. She could still smell him there, his scent hanging over the seat but fading with each passing minute. She took him in and closed her eyes and slept.

She dreamed of their weekend again, the second one. Only they hadn't even gone on a weekend. It had been a Thursday. But she could think of their time spent there only in weekends. Ends and beginnings, starts and finishes, completeness.

There in front of the fire, they talked openly for the first time without the shadow of Nazir looming over them, omnipotent and malicious. (But how wrong they had been, how blind she had been.)

"Is it possible?" she had asked him, the contradiction and incongruity of these realities welling at their own shore.

"I don't know," he said somberly.

"Your past and my illness," she started, getting at the heart of it. The real thing. He said he wasn't scared of her illness, of the things it would do to her and to him, to them together. He wasn't scared of that reality.

"You're not scared of the ugly things I've done."

"I am though."

It occurred to her that she had just traded one fear for the other, Nazir for Brody.

It was then that she woke, the fluorescent lighting of the parking lot straining her eyes after the smooth darkness of that unreachable firelight.

Later, after she had gone back to Saul; after he had hugged her close and whispered her name, over and over as if to make it more real; after they had moved away from that room full of bodies; after she had vomited from the smell and from the taste and from all of it; after Saul had sent her home, to get rest and to get away; after everything, she walked through her front door, into that vast and wide emptiness. She staggered into her living room, the blanket on the sofa still sprawled out from when she and Brody had napped there just days ago. She looked up at her sprawling corkboard, vast and empty, too.

She reached into her back pocket and unfolded a piece of paper, carefully smoothing out the creases. It was his picture, an image taken from his video. His uniform was pristine and pressed, not a wrinkle to be found. He stood tall and stoic, his arms by his side, his posture perfect. She took a thumbtack and pinned the picture to the board, right at the top.

She stepped back and took it in.

It was complete.


End file.
